Free. Plain words. Never tells you what to buy.
Learn money by practicing it, with your own numbers.
Nobody taught most of us how a pay stub, a fee, a loan, or a business actually works. Here you learn it in five minute steps, do the arithmetic with your own figures, and rehearse the hard years in a game before they are real.
Find my first step Play thirty real years
No account needed. About this site.
The practice game · a rehearsal, not a forecast · real years, real returns
2007
It is 2007. You have $40,000 saved, mostly in stocks. The year was fine.
You have $40,000 invested.
What one percent costs
Nearly every retirement account, fund, and advisor takes a small share of your balance every year, shown on the statement as a decimal and never as dollars. This box shows it in dollars; put in your own numbers and move the sliders.
Over 30 years you would put in $133,000. At 7 percent a year it becomes $568,904. With a 1 percent yearly fee it becomes $451,919. The fee took $116,985, 21 percent of what the money would have grown to, which is 32.5 years of what you add each month.
The numbers travel in the link itself; nothing is stored.
Arithmetic only: the same deposits compounded monthly at the two rates, which are assumptions you just set, not a forecast of any market. The fee is the yearly charge on a fund or an account, called an expense ratio or an advisory fee on the statement. What it pays for, and where to find yours, is in the library; the formula is printed in the fee calculator, where two plans sit side by side.
What you will be able to do
Not what the market will do. What you will.
How it works
Four kinds of learners come here, each with a road of six short lessons; teachers and organizations have their own pages.
Each lesson is about five minutes: a plain explanation, a check with your own numbers, and one real thing to go do.
A raise, a year end, a deal on the desk. My money remembers where you were and what you hold.
Not sure where you fit? Answer three plain questions and the site picks for you.
Already holding something?
A document in hand is the fastest way in. It is read on your device and nothing is kept until you say so.
Free to learn. Paid to keep.
Everything that teaches is free, for anyone, and stays free: 217 guides, 24 calculators, 380 words explained, 119 rules in the landscape, each with its date and its source. No ads, no affiliate links, no product behind it, and when an answer drifts toward advice it is withheld rather than shown. The person who comes back: a raise, a new job, a year end, a deal to read. Your numbers follow you to every device, your history is kept, and the free monthly limits on questions and readers are lifted. $12 a month, or $99 a year.