Financial language is not accidentally confusing. A contract you cannot read is a contract you cannot argue with, and the people writing them have never had much reason to fix that.
So this is the fix on our end. Every term here gets the same treatment: what it means in one sentence, what it means in practice, the formula if there is one, real numbers rather than placeholders, and an honest note about where it tends to cost people money. Where a term is defined in law rather than in convention — and a lot of them are — we cite the actual regulation and link it, so you can check us.
Two rules we hold ourselves to. Numbers get checked against the source that publishes them, and dated, because a rate quoted with no date is a rate that will be wrong within the year. And nothing here is advice — a definition tells you what a thing is, not whether you should sign it.
If you would rather learn this in order than look it up, the free Financial Literacy course covers the same ground across five stages, all of it open with no account.