The Reserving Game
Your business insurance quote is not a price. It is a market position, taken by an insurer whose history of getting reserves right or wrong helps determine the number you pay.
Explore / Consumer Finance
Consumer Finance
How financial products really work — the margins, mechanics, and trade-offs hidden in everyday money.
Start here. Follow your curiosity.
Explore connections ↗The Broker's Cut
You think your broker is shopping the market for you. They are being paid by the people they are shopping at.
The Loan You Never Agreed To
Most graduates think they took out a loan to go to university. They didn't — not in any meaningful sense of the word. They signed up to a 30-year graduate tax that's collected through payroll, charges interest that has at points exceeded 7%, and is sold by the government to private investors.
The Number That Doesn't Exist
How Your Credit Score Actually Works
The Housing Trap
The median English home costs 7.6x median earnings. In 1997 it was 3.5x. The system isn't broken — it's working exactly as designed.
The Loyalty Trap — Why Points, Stamps and Memberships Cost You More Than You Earn
That coffee stamp card isn't rewarding your loyalty — it's engineering your habits. This report dismantles the behavioural architecture behind points, stamps, and memberships, from the endowed progress effect that makes pre-stamped cards so effective, to supermarket loyalty schemes where the data you surrender is worth far more than the points you earn, to the airline miles treadmill where your rewards quietly devalue every year while your spending doesn't.
The Cashback Trap — How Earning Money Back Actually Costs You More
Every time you "earn" cashback, someone else already made more money from you spending it. This report follows the money trail from interchange fees to your wallet, reveals how cashback cards drive 10-25% more spending than you'd otherwise make, and exposes the hidden transfer where low-income cash users pay higher prices to fund rewards for higher-income credit card holders.