Financial Terminology, Explained Without the Jargon
The words on the terms summary that actually change the price you pay, and the ones that are harmless shorthand.
Category
Financial
How financial products, services and terminology actually work, and the questions to ask before you commit your money.
Most financial decisions are not really about finance. They are about not understanding what a product does until after you have signed for it. Interest that compounds against you, a fee that looks small until you run the numbers, a "pre-approved" offer that was never checked against your actual situation — the mechanics are almost always simple once somebody explains them.
This section exists to do that explaining. We cover the vocabulary, the mechanics and the questions worth asking, in plain language, with the trade-offs stated rather than glossed over. We do not recommend specific products and we are not financial advisers. What we do is help you read a terms summary, spot the part that matters, and know when a decision is worth walking away from.
How to use these guides
- Start with the basics guide if you are building a foundation from scratch.
- Read the terminology guide before you read anything else — it removes most of the confusion in the rest of this section.
- Use the evaluation guide as a checklist before you sign up for anything, in this category or anywhere else online.
Start here
Featured in Financial
A good first read if you have not worked through this topic before.
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How Your Credit File Actually Works
What a credit file contains, who is allowed to see it, what genuinely moves the numbers, and the right order of operations for fixing an error.
Library
All Financial guides
Newest first.
All Financial guides
How to Evaluate an Online Financial Service Before You Sign Up
A nine-point checklist for judging any online financial product: who runs it, what it costs, what happens when you want to leave, and who to ask when it goes wrong.
How to Compare Financial Products Without Fooling Yourself
A repeatable comparison method: normalise the offers, price the whole term, then stress-test the deal against the way you actually behave.
How Online Financial Services Actually Work
Where the money comes from, who pays for what, and why the same product can cost you nothing in one place and something in another.
Personal Finance Basics: A Framework That Scales
Money problems are usually priority problems, not knowledge problems. A four-part framework for getting the fundamentals in order, in the order that actually helps.
Resources
Financial resources
Services referenced by the guides above, with what each one is actually for.
Financial resources
Fintel Connect
Paid subscription to SEC filings, insider transaction records and analyst reports, searchable by company or person.
Useful if you follow a specific company and want raw filings instead of summaries.
Paid subscription
See what it covers (Fintel Connect)
We have not supplied an affiliate URL for this service, so this link goes to the vendor's own site and earns us nothing.
AnnualCreditReport.com
The federally authorised site for pulling your own credit reports from the three nationwide bureaus at no cost.
You are entitled to a free report from each bureau every 12 months, regardless of whether you applied for credit.
Free to use
TransUnion Free Credit Report
One of the three nationwide credit bureaus, providing a direct route to your own credit file and dispute process.
Also the route for filing a dispute directly with the bureau that supplied the error.
Free to use
NerdWallet
Editorial comparison content for financial products, with calculators for loans, cards and savings.
A comparison site, not a provider. Read their methodology before trusting any ranking.
YNAB
Envelope-based budgeting built on giving every unit of money a job before it is spent.
Paid, with a trial. Steep learning curve, and a good fit if you think in terms of targets rather than categories.
Paid, trial available
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