Topic
Money
Ideas about money, markets, spending, saving and risk.
33 cards
Money
The story everyone believes
Anything a group of people agree to accept in exchange for things.
Barter
The deal before money
Swapping one thing directly for another, with no money in between.
Inflation
The tax on your piggy bank
The slow loss of what money can buy, year after year.
The Budget
Three numbers that run your money
A plan made before the spending starts, not after.
Need vs Want
The one-question filter
A need keeps life working; a want makes it nicer.
Compound Interest
The snowball that keeps growing
Interest that earns interest, so growth speeds up over time.
The SIP
Small bets, long game
A fixed amount put into an investment on the same day every month.
The Credit Trap
Minimum payment, maximum cost
Borrowed money that costs more the longer it is left unpaid.
EMI
The cost of "easy"
A large price broken into equal monthly payments, with interest added.
Insurance
A bet you hope to lose
Many people pay a small amount so that the few who need it get a lot.
The Bank Account
Where your money lives
A record at a bank showing money held in a person's name.
UPI
How India skipped the queue
India's system for sending money between any two bank accounts instantly.
Taxation
The membership fee for everything shared
A share of what people earn and spend, collected to pay for shared things.
GST
One tax instead of seventeen
One tax on the final price, replacing a chain of separate taxes.
Consumer Rights
What the law says when a product fails
The protections a buyer is owed by law when something goes wrong.
The Ponzi Scheme
Returns from nowhere
A fake investment that pays old investors with new investors' money.
Phishing
The message that pretends to be someone you trust
A message pretending to come from someone trusted, to steal information.
Opportunity Cost
The price of what you did not choose
The value of the best thing given up to get something else.
The Attention Economy
You are the product
The business of holding attention and selling it to advertisers.
Entrepreneurship
The lemonade-stand principle
Spotting a problem people will pay to have solved, and solving it.
Habits
The compound interest of behaviour
An action repeated until it runs without deciding to do it.
Financial Independence
The crossover point
The point where investments cover living costs, so work becomes a choice.
Oil and Gas
A barrel is a price and a plan
The system that finds, moves, refines, and prices fossil energy.
The Container
The box that made distance cheap
The standard steel box that reorganised how the world trades.
Settlement
The payment ends long after the receipt
The back-office step where money actually changes hands.
Six Materials
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, lithium
The handful of raw materials that everything else is built from.
Catastrophe Insurance
Pricing a disaster before it happens
The business of putting a number on rare, enormous losses.
Where Waste Goes
Recycling is a commodity business
The global trade that handles what everyone throws away.
The Last Mile
The shortest leg costs the most
The final stretch to your door, and why it dominates the bill.
The Learning Curve
Every doubling makes it cheaper
The rule that cost falls a fixed share each time output doubles.
The PAN
Ten characters that follow your money
The permanent number tying every financial record to one person.
KYC
Why every account asks the same things
The identity check an institution must run before it holds your money.
The Nominee
One line that saves a family months
The person an institution may hand your holdings to when you die.