Category
A share is ownership, a bond is a loan, and a fund is a container holding many of either — which is why the third is a different kind of thing from the first two and gets confused with them
Because there is no single global payment system — money does not move between countries so much as a chain of banks update each other's records, and each link adds time. What actually happens.
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) lets you receive goods immediately and pay in instalments, typically three or four payments over six to twelve weeks, usually with no interest if paid on time. How the model
National Insurance (NI) is a UK contribution paid by employees, employers and the self-employed. It funds specific contributory benefits and the NHS — and the relationship between what you pay and
Inheritance tax (IHT) in the UK is charged on the value of an estate above a threshold when someone dies. The structure involves several allowances that interact, which is why the commonly quoted
The term is how long you have to repay the whole loan. The deal is the interest rate arrangement covering a much shorter period within it. Confusing them causes people to miss the most expensive
Quantitative easing (QE) is a central bank creating new money to buy financial assets — overwhelmingly government bonds — in order to stimulate the economy when conventional interest rate cuts have
A bank run is a large number of depositors withdrawing money simultaneously because they fear the bank will fail — and the crucial feature is that the fear can cause the failure regardless of whether
Diversification means spreading money across different investments so that no single outcome dominates the result. It is one of the few things in investing that reliably improves the risk-return
Saving puts money somewhere the nominal amount cannot fall. Investing puts money into assets whose value can rise or fall, in exchange for the possibility of higher returns over time. Saving. Cash in
Credit utilisation is the proportion of your available credit that you are actually using. It is one of the most influential factors in credit scoring, and one of the easiest to change quickly. How
Your cleared balance is money that has fully settled in the account. Your available balance is what you can actually spend right now. They differ because payments do not move instantly, and the gap
Authorised push payment (APP) fraud is when you are tricked into sending money yourself to a criminal. Because you authorised the payment, it was historically treated very differently from fraud
They differ in what determines your interest rate, and therefore in who carries the risk of rates moving. Fixed rate. The rate is locked for a set period — typically two, three, five or ten years.
The base rate — in the UK, Bank Rate, set by the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee — is the interest rate the central bank pays on reserves held by commercial banks. It is the anchor from
Because banks are legally required to, under anti-money laundering regulation. It is not suspicion of you personally, and refusing to answer causes more problems than answering. The legal framework.
Because they are competing commercial companies, not a public register. In the UK the three main ones are Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, and each maintains its own separate database. Why this
They are three UK payment systems with different speeds, costs and purposes — and knowing which is being used explains why some payments arrive instantly and others take days. Faster Payments.
Open Banking is a regulatory framework requiring banks to let you share your own account data with, or initiate payments through, authorised third parties — securely, and with your explicit consent.
A savings account is money you can access whenever you like. A pension is a long-term, tax-advantaged wrapper you generally cannot touch until a set age — and that restriction is the price of
An Individual Savings Account is a UK tax wrapper. Money inside it grows free of income tax and capital gains tax, and withdrawals are tax-free. It is not an investment itself — it is a container
The difference is who owns them, and ownership determines who the institution ultimately exists to serve. A bank is a company owned by shareholders, who may have no relationship with it as customers.
Gross pay is what you earn before anything is taken off — the figure in your contract and in the job advert. Net pay is what actually reaches your bank account after deductions. The gap is often
Because the rate you see online is not a rate anyone offers you. It is the mid-market rate — the midpoint between what buyers are bidding and what sellers are asking on the wholesale currency market.