Finance

19 ideas, each explained on one page with a 60-second lesson you can play right there.

Auction An auction is a process of buying or selling goods and services through bids, which are offers of a specific price or terms.
Compound Interest Compound interest adds earned interest back to your starting principal, causing savings and debts to grow faster over time.
Deficit spending Deficit spending is the amount by which spending exceeds revenue over a specific period, usually a single fiscal year.
Dollar-cost averaging Dollar-cost averaging invests a fixed sum on a set schedule, automatically buying more units when prices fall and fewer when they rise.
Index Fund An index fund mirrors a published market list instead of picking stocks, cutting fees and reliably outperforming most active managers over time.
Inflation Inflation is a general rise in the average price of goods and services across an entire economy.
Lifestyle creep Lifestyle creep occurs when higher income leads to higher spending at the same rate, turning optional luxuries into perceived daily necessities.
Market liquidity Market liquidity is a market feature that lets you buy or sell an asset quickly without forcing a major change in its price.
Maturity (finance) Maturity is the exact date when a loan, bond, or other debt must be fully repaid to the lender.
Mental accounting Mental accounting explains how people separate identical money into subjective buckets, changing how they spend and evaluate financial decisions.
National debt of the United States The cumulative money borrowed by the US government to cover budget deficits, tracked as outstanding Treasury securities.
Net worth Net worth is the total value of everything you own minus everything you owe.
Open market operation An open market operation is the buying or selling of government bonds by a central bank to manage interest rates and liquidity.
Prospect theory Prospect theory is an economic theory describing how real people make decisions involving risk and uncertainty.
Slot machine Slot machines decide payouts the instant you press the button using a random number generator.
Sunk cost A sunk cost is money, time, or effort that has already been spent and cannot be recovered by any future choice.
United States Treasury security United States Treasury securities are debt instruments issued by the government and used as cash equivalents worldwide.
Yield curve A yield curve is a line graph that compares the interest rates of bonds from the same issuer across different lengths of time.
Yield to maturity Yield to maturity calculates the total annual return on a bond held to the end, factoring in its market price, regular payments, and face value.