· 4 min read
What a 1 Percent Fee Costs Over 30 Years
A one-point difference in annual charges turns $75,063 into $57,435 on the same $10,000. The fee costs more than the sum invested — here is why compounding does that.
Articles by Camille Laurent
Finance writer · View profile
· 13 min read
Child Support Is a Shared Cost, Not a Slice of One Salary
Income shares asks what two parents together would have spent, then splits it. On $5,000 and $3,000 with two children the schedule says $2,257.37, the shares are 62.5 and 37.5 percent, and after 90 overnights the order is $1,301.47 a month.
· 4 min read
How Much Life Insurance Do You Need? The DIME Method
Skip the vague rules of thumb. The DIME method — Debt, Income, Mortgage, Education — gives you a defensible number for how much life cover your family actually needs.
· 3 min read
How to Read an Amortization Schedule
Understand an amortization schedule row by row: how each payment splits into principal and interest, and why early payments are mostly interest.
· 4 min read
Debt Avalanche vs Snowball: What the Difference Actually Costs
One method targets the highest interest rate, the other the smallest balance. On a realistic set of debts the gap is smaller than most people expect — here is the calculation.
· 5 min read
How to Pay Off Credit Card Debt: The Minimum Payment Trap in Numbers
Paying the minimum on $5,000 at 20 percent takes 40 years and costs $18,500 in interest. A fixed $200 a month clears it in under three years for $1,522. Here is the method.
· 7 min read
How Crypto Tax Is Calculated: The Principles That Apply Everywhere
Rates differ by country, the mechanics rarely do: a disposal triggers a gain, the gain is proceeds minus cost basis, and staking is income. Here is the calculation and where jurisdictions diverge.
· 6 min read
Is Crypto Mining Profitable? Electricity, Hashrate and Difficulty
Mining profit is daily revenue minus daily power cost, and the electricity price decides it. Here is the calculation, a break-even table, and the three variables that move against you.
· 3 min read
How Much Down Payment Do You Need to Buy a Home?
How to work out a down payment: typical percentages, the 20% PMI threshold in the US, and how the amount you put down changes your monthly payment.
· 4 min read
Position Sizing: What the 1 Percent Rule Actually Constrains
The rule caps the loss, not the position. Here is the formula, a worked example, and what a run of ten losses costs at 1 percent versus 2 percent.
· 4 min read
How to Calculate Your Liquidation Price on a Leveraged Position
The liquidation price follows directly from your leverage: at 10x a 10 percent move wipes you out. Here is the formula, the maintenance margin that moves it closer, and how to read the number before you open.
· 5 min read
How to Compare the Cost of Living Between Two Cities
Use a cost-of-living index to turn a job offer in another city into an apples-to-apples salary — so you know if the move leaves you better or worse off.
· 16 min read
What a Rent Increase Is Allowed to Be
Five of six markets index the permitted increase to a published statistic, and each names a different one. The arithmetic is universal: on a $1,500 rent, ten years at a 1 percent index leaves you 25.38 percent below a market that grew 4 percent.
· 12 min read
Home Equity Is Not One Number
Value minus debt gives $139,167. After the costs of selling it is $111,867. What a lender will actually let you borrow against it is $55,167. Same house, same day, three answers — and the third is the one that governs.
· 11 min read
Recasting a Mortgage Is the Option Nobody Mentions
The same $60,000 lump sum, three ways. Recasting drops the payment by $405.12 and saves $61,537 of interest. Keeping the payment saves $174,359. Refinancing does something else again — and which one wins depends on a question nobody asks.
· 14 min read
Reverse Mortgages: What You Are Actually Selling
No monthly payment means the balance compounds instead of amortising. On $160,000 drawn against a $400,000 home, the debt passes the value in 11.68 years if prices stay flat — and reaches $714,857 by year twenty.
· 15 min read
How Much House Can You Actually Afford?
Three constraints decide it — the deposit, the lender's ratio and the payment you can live with — and they bind in a different order for different buyers. Same $90,000 income, three answers: $230,769, $355,360 and $431,922.
· 16 min read
What an Estate Agent's Commission Actually Buys
Six markets, six different answers to who pays and how much. The same $300,000 sale costs the seller $10,710 in one and $18,450 in another — and against $100,000 of equity, those are 10.71 and 18.45 percent, not 3.57 and 6.15.
· 14 min read
Appreciation Is Not Your Return
Five percent nominal growth is 2.4390 percent real — by division, not subtraction. Ownership costs take it to 0.0317 percent, transaction costs demand a 2.85-year hold before you break even, and leverage multiplies whatever is left by five in both directions.
· 15 min read
Vacancy Is Not a Percentage You Lose — It Is a Month You Do Not Collect
Six weeks empty is 11.11 percent vacancy on a one-year tenancy and 4.00 percent on a three-year one. The break-even rent increase that justifies risking that void is 29.52 percent over a year and 8.99 percent over three.
· 16 min read
What a Rental Property Actually Earns
Gross rent minus mortgage says $15,934. The real cash flow is $1,392.56. Here is the full profit-and-loss account line by line, and the four separate returns a rental produces — of which cash flow is the smallest.
· 17 min read
A HELOC Is Two Loans Wearing One Name
A draw period and a repayment period behave completely differently. On a $100,000 line at 8 percent the payment goes from $666.67 to $955.65 overnight — and to $1,200.17 if the rate has reached 12 percent. Ten years of interest-only payments leave the balance exactly where it started.
· 17 min read
FHA Loans and the Insurance That Does Not Go Away
An FHA loan buys a lower entry barrier with a permanent cost. Two premiums: 1.75 percent upfront, financed, which costs $8,616 in interest on a $6,755 charge; and an annual premium that at the minimum down payment runs for the whole term. The break-even against a conventional loan is not a date — it is a PMI rate, and it is 1.26 percent.
· 16 min read
VA Loans: The Funding Fee and What You Are Not Paying
No down payment, no mortgage insurance at any loan-to-value ratio, and one funding fee — 2.15 percent on a first-use purchase with nothing down, waived entirely for disability-compensated veterans. On a $400,000 house that $8,600 fee equals between two and seven years of the private mortgage insurance it replaces.