I am looking for an online resource to learn finances/economics/investment from the ground up.

I am using those three words because I do not know the difference quite well. The bottom line is that I want to learn how money works, and stop “selling my time for money” (working for some employer). Maybe starting a business, investing in real state, or stock market, maybe another route that I don’t even see…

  • I am looking for content ideally free, but good material deserves to be paid too.
  • Progressive complexity starting from little or no assumptions: several youtubers have all-over-the-place topics that they comment on, assuming you know what they are talking about.
  • Perhaps a book or series of books is the solution to this? Or an online course? But you know, every “money bro” says they have the best book/course ever.

thanks for your comments :)

  • dragontamer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 hours ago

    You’ve got equities, debt and derivatives.

    Equities are ownership into shares. These are the simplest to understand. You own a share of a company and thus are entitled to a % of the profits (though most companies today choose 0% as their decision).

    Debt means funding… debt. SLABs (student loan backed securities), MBS (mortgage backed securities), bonds (government debt), bank loans etc. etc. These are surprisingly complex in practice but perhaps easiest to understand. There’s lots of different details to debt (callable, puttable, tax free, convertible, coupons, notes, bills, bonds, I-bonds, EBonds, 10Y, 3M, overnight repos). But in all cases, you lend money to someone, and later they try to return it to you + a little extra.

    Derivatives (usually options but there are many kinds) are new inventions that are more complex. Ignore these as they are very very complex.

    That’s about it.

    The general recommendation is to buy an ETF for equities and an ETF for Bonds. ETF is just a combination of simpler investments that you pay 0.04% to 2% a year for convenience.

    VOO takes the 500 biggest companies in the USA (aka the S&P 500) and buys mostly the biggest company and a very little bit of #500.

    BND is a similar idea except it’s a whole bunch of different debts from across the entire economy.

    So buy some equities (mostly equities), some bonds, and leave some cash in a high yield savings account. Done.

    Stocks (aka VOO) make the most money on the average, but also loses money the most often.

    Bonds (aka BND) makes middle amount of money but rarely loses money.

    Cash / savings accounts never lose money (except inflation). But makes very very little. It’s still worthwhile to keep necessarily amounts as cash and this you should always be considering how much cash to keep.