How Credit Card Minimum Payments Are Calculated
The small number on your statement follows a formula set by your issuer. Knowing the formula shows why the balance shrinks so slowly.
Gabriela Montoya · September 13, 2026What Core Inflation Is — and Why the Fed Watches It Over Headline
Core inflation strips food and energy prices from the index, producing the smoother series the Federal Reserve treats as the better guide to underlying price pressure.
Lena Fischer · August 28, 2026
How the Consumer Price Index Is Actually Calculated
The CPI is built from about 94,000 monthly price quotes weighted by household spending surveys, and its known limits — substitution, coverage, shelter lag — are published with it.
Henrik Larsen · August 26, 2026
Core CPI Rose 2.5% Year Over Year in July
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' core inflation gauge, which excludes food and energy, climbed 0.2% for the month and 2.5% from a year earlier in the July 2026 report.
Valentina Sokolov · August 23, 2026
BLS Prices Nearly 80,000 Items to Build the CPI
The Consumer Price Index comes from monthly price checks on roughly 80,000 items across dozens of U.S. areas, weighted by a separate survey of household spending.
Lena Fischer · August 15, 2026
Owners' Equivalent Rent Carries 25.8% of the CPI
A quarter of the U.S. consumer price index tracks a rent no homeowner pays. Here is how the Bureau of Labor Statistics builds the number, and why it lags market rents.
Lena Fischer · August 13, 2026Fed Cuts Rates Half a Point, First Reduction Since 2020
The Federal Reserve lowered its policy rate 50 basis points to 4.75-5.00 percent in September 2024, its first cut since March 2020, citing rising labor-market risk.
Lena Fischer · August 10, 2026Consumer Confidence vs. Consumer Spending: Which Predicts
Americans routinely tell surveyors the economy is terrible and then keep spending — and the 2022–2025 cycle proved the mood-spending gap can last years.
Lena Fischer · July 23, 2026
Why Companies Go Private in Leveraged Buyouts
An LBO buys a public company with its own borrowed future cash flow — the arithmetic works when debt is cheap, the business is stable, and the exit door is open.
Lena Fischer · August 10, 2026Markets
More in Markets →
How the Consumer Price Index Turns 80,000 Prices Into One Number
The BLS combines roughly 80,000 monthly price quotes with Consumer Expenditure Survey weights to produce the CPI, which rose 0.1% in July 2026 as core inflation climbed 0.2%.
Valentina Sokolov · August 20, 2026
Credit Spreads as a Recession Indicator
The gap between corporate bond yields and Treasuries prices default risk — and widening credit spreads have called downturns the equity market missed.
Valentina Sokolov · July 27, 2026
What the Put-Call Ratio Signals
Volume in puts divided by volume in calls is sentiment in one number — and it is a contrarian indicator at the extremes, when there is no one left to convert.
Valentina Sokolov · July 5, 2026
How the Dollar Index Works
The DXY weighs six foreign currencies — over half of it the euro — which makes it a useful benchmark and a misleading one at the same time.
Lena Fischer · June 12, 2026Retail
More in Retail →
Federal Law Sets a Five-Year Floor on Gift Card Expiration
A 2009 amendment to the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, enforced through Regulation E, bars most store and prepaid gift cards from expiring in under five years and caps dormancy fees, with carve-outs shoppers rarely see printed on the card.
Henrik Larsen · August 21, 2026
Retail Sales Fall 0.6% in July as Inflation Holds at 3.4%
Consumer spending posted its sharpest monthly drop in more than a year, even as annual retail sales growth continued to outpace headline inflation, government data show.
Henrik Larsen · August 12, 2026Dollar Store Expansion Economics
Dollar General and Dollar Tree grew to over 40,000 U.S. stores on small-basket, low-cost arithmetic — and hit the model's ceiling when the customer ran out of money.
Lena Fischer · August 1, 2026Buy Online, Pick Up In Store, Explained
BOPIS turns the store into the fulfillment node — cheaper than delivery for the retailer, faster for the shopper, and the rare e-commerce feature where both sides win.
Henrik Larsen · July 9, 2026Finance
More in Finance →
37% Top Tax Bracket Doesn't Apply to All Income
IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 sets the 2026 federal income tax brackets, and the mechanism behind them trips up more taxpayers than the numbers themselves.
Gabriela Montoya · August 17, 2026
How Deposit Insurance Limits Work
The $250,000 limit applies per depositor, per bank, per ownership category — a rule that legally multiplies coverage across accounts and is routinely misread.
Lena Fischer · August 5, 2026How Bank Failures Get Resolved by the FDIC
When a bank fails, the FDIC takes it over by Friday night and reopens it Monday under a buyer — depositors' experience of the process is usually a weekend of headlines.
Gabriela Montoya · July 14, 2026How Grace Periods and Balance Transfers Work
The grace period makes card interest optional for full payers; the balance transfer makes it negotiable for revolvers — both are rules written in the disclosure, not favors.
Gabriela Montoya · June 21, 2026Business News
More in Business News →
CEO Exits Fall 26% as Firms Cut Management Layers Instead
Boards are keeping chief executives in place while companies strip out the management tier beneath them, new turnover and workforce data show.
Lena Fischer · August 18, 2026
Core CPI Climbed 2.5% in July, Excluding Food and Fuel
Core inflation strips out food and energy to track the underlying trend. Here is what it measures, how it differs from headline CPI, and why the Federal Reserve tracks a different index entirely.
Lena Fischer · August 10, 2026Dividend Yield vs. Dividend Growth
The yield tells you what the stock pays now; the growth rate tells you what it will pay later — and the second number decides whether a high yield is income or a trap.
Lena Fischer · July 18, 2026What Poison Pill Defenses Do
A poison pill lets all shareholders but the raider buy stock at a discount — diluting an acquirer past the point of economics without a single court filing.
Lena Fischer · June 25, 2026