Spending
Cost per use is the number that decides whether something was expensive
Price is what you hand over once; cost per use is what a purchase actually charges you over its life, and…
· 4 min read
Rosa Iglesias
Senior writer, Dollars & Decisions
Rosa has written about spending, saving, debt for most of the last decade and is unreasonably interested in the detail nobody else checks.
18 articles
Spending
Lifestyle inflation is a ratchet, which is exactly what makes it expensive
Spending rises easily when income rises and comes down only with effort, so each increase quietly converts…
· 4 min read
Saving
An emergency fund is insurance you underwrite yourself
The purpose of a cash buffer is not growth but the conversion of an unpredictable shock into a survivable…
· 4 min read
Debt
Stretching a loan lowers the payment and raises the total
Term length moves the monthly figure and the amount eventually handed over in opposite directions, because…
· 4 min read
Investing Basics
Diversification removes one kind of risk and leaves another standing
Spreading money across many holdings reduces the damage any single one can do, but it cannot reduce the…
· 4 min read
Money & Mind
A loss weighs more than a gain of exactly the same size
The well-documented asymmetry known as loss aversion means the same amount of money registers more strongly…
· 4 min read
Spending
A price is set by one side of the transaction and the value by the other
Two quite different quantities get quoted in the same currency: the amount a seller asks, and the worth a…
· 4 min read
Debt
Consolidation moves a debt into one place without making it smaller
Combining several balances into a single loan changes the payment, the term and the number of statements…
· 4 min read
Investing Basics
Risk means one thing to a saver and something else to an investor
The same word covers the chance that a balance falls and the chance that it fails to keep up, and the two…
· 3 min read
Investing Basics
Past performance is a small sample and a noisy one
A record of returns is real information about what happened and a weak guide to what happens next, because…
· 3 min read
Money & Mind
Money decisions get worse exactly when there is least of it
Being short of money occupies attention, and the attention it occupies is the same attention that financial…
· 3 min read
Investing Basics
A return has two parts, and only one of them shows up in the price
What an investment pays out and what it changes in value are separate components, and confusing the two…
· 3 min read
Spending
A large purchase can be paid for three ways, and each charges in a different currency
Taking the money from a reserve, saving for it first and borrowing for it all deliver the same object, but…
· 4 min read
Saving
Moving home concentrates a year of costs into a few weeks
The money involved in changing address arrives as a dense cluster of separate payments, most of them due…
· 4 min read
Saving
Money held for a child is being saved for somebody who will eventually decide
A long-horizon pot built for someone else carries two questions an ordinary savings goal does not: who owns…
· 4 min read
Debt
A debt held jointly is not half a debt each
Two names on a borrowing agreement usually means each person is answerable for the whole amount, which is a…
· 4 min read
Investing Basics
What a household can absorb and what it can tolerate are two separate measurements
Capacity for loss is arithmetic about circumstances, tolerance is temperament, and the amount of risk a…
· 3 min read
Money & Mind
Very few households can answer simple questions about their own money
Not knowing what comes in, what goes out or what is owed is close to universal, and the reasons are…
· 3 min read