Broke by Design: Banks, Cards, Loans, and the Money Lessons School Skipped

Nobody taught you this.Thirteen years of school, and no one explained what an APR is. Or why a bank pays you half a percent on your savings while charging your neighbour 22.9% on the same money. Or why the minimum payment printed on your card statement is a marketing decision rather than a repayment plan.Maya arrives at 24 with a payslip she has never read past the bottom line, $9,300 of debt, and nothing saved. Over seventeen sessions she takes the whole machine apart. What a bank actually is, and how it earns its spread. How interest works in both directions, and why paying the minimum on a $2,400 balance takes 159 months and costs $3,491.90 in interest. Which debt to kill first, and why that choice matters less than everyone claims. How an 84-month car loan leaves you owing more than the car is worth. What inflation quietly removes. Why 93% of professional fund managers lost to a plain index over twenty years. How much house is too much house, and what a 25-year loan really costs once you add it up. And the number that would let her stop needing a salary, with the date attached to it.Every figure is worked out in front of you, line by line, rather than asserted.Nothing here is country-specific. No named retirement accounts, no local tax schemes. Those get renamed by whichever government is in office, and people who learn the scheme instead of the mechanism are helpless the moment it changes. Learn how a loan amortises and you can read any loan document on earth.There are also no lectures about coffee. The people in this book got into trouble through rent, a car, and a credit card, which is where the money actually goes.By 31, Maya has no consumer debt, six months of expenses in cash, $51,986 invested, and a target date. She earns $66,000 a year.For anyone who left school able to name the parts of a cell and unable to read a loan agreement.