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What is here

The claim-checking checklist, for testing any single statement about money.
Questions to ask any money book, a one-page test to run before you trust a whole book.
The source-evaluation guide, for judging where a number came from in about a minute.
A plain-English glossary, thirty-five words that money books use without defining.
An honest reading list, by kind of book, with what each kind is good and bad at.
Printable versions of all five, formatted for one or two pages of paper.

Resource one

The claim-checking checklist

Use this on a single statement, not a whole book. It takes about five minutes and it works on anything: a paragraph in a bestseller, a headline, a video, or something a confident relative said at dinner.

Checklist

Twelve steps for one claim

Before you look anything up

Write the claim in one sentence. If you cannot state it in one sentence, you do not yet know what is being claimed, and you will end up checking something else.
Decide what kind of claim it is. A definition, a number, a rule, a prediction, or a story. Each kind is checked differently, and mixing them up is the most common mistake.
Ask what would make it false. If nothing could, it is not a finding, it is a slogan. Stop here and label it accordingly.
Notice who benefits if you believe it. Not proof of anything. Just a reason to be careful about which direction you look first.

While you look it up

Find the original, not the repetition. Follow the claim back until you reach a document rather than another article. If the trail stops at a person, you have found an Author’s Claim.
Check the date on the source. Rates, rules and thresholds move. A number that was correct is not the same thing as a number that is correct.
Check the country. Ideas travel. Tax, accounts, benefits and consumer protections do not. Ask whether the source is even about where you live.
Look for one strong disagreement. Actively search for the best argument against, not the worst. If you cannot find any, that is useful. If you find a serious one, the claim is contested.
Ask who was measured. Studies and surveys cover particular people in a particular period. Ask whether you are one of them before you apply the result to yourself.

Before you act on it

Separate the arithmetic from the behaviour. Most money arguments are not about maths. They are about what a person will actually do in a bad month, which is a different question with different evidence.
Give it a tag and write the reason. Established, Contested, or Author’s Claim, plus one line saying why. The reason matters more than the tag.
Write down what would change your mind. Do it now, in writing, before you are attached to the answer. This is the single habit that separates checking from arguing.

This is a thinking tool, not financial advice. It tells you how well a statement is supported. It does not tell you what to do with your money.

Open the printable version

Resource two

Questions to ask any money book

Run this before you take a whole book seriously. Ten minutes with the contents page, the introduction, and the back of the book will answer most of it. A good book can fail a couple of these. A book that fails most of them is a sales document.

One-pager

Fourteen questions

What exactly is it claiming? State the book’s central promise in one sentence, in your own words. If you cannot, the book may be selling a feeling rather than an argument.
Who is it written for? Every book assumes an income, a country, a family shape, and an amount of spare time. Find those assumptions and ask whether they describe you.
Are there sources? Look for notes, references, or a bibliography. Their absence is not proof of anything, but it tells you what kind of book you are holding.
Can you trace one number? Pick a single figure and follow it. If it leads to a document, that is a good sign about the whole book. If it leads nowhere, that is also information.
When was it written, and when was it updated? Check the copyright page. A confident book about rules from a decade ago is a history book with a modern cover.
Which country is it about? Tax, accounts, benefits and protections differ everywhere. Much advice is silently national.
Does it separate what it knows from what it believes? Good money writing marks the difference. Weak money writing uses the same confident tone for both.
How much of the evidence is the author’s own story? One person’s results are an anecdote no matter how impressive they are, and no matter how many chapters they fill.
Does it ever say I do not know? A book that is certain about everything is certain about some things it should not be.
What does it assume you will do under stress? Nearly every disagreement between money books is really a disagreement about human behaviour in a bad year.
Does it acknowledge the strongest counterargument? Not a weak version set up to be knocked down. The real one, stated fairly.
What is being sold at the end? A course, a service, a platform, a fund, a subscription. Not disqualifying, and worth knowing before chapter one rather than after chapter twenty.
Would the advice still work if everyone followed it? Some strategies only work while they are unusual. Books rarely mention which ones.
What would make the author change their mind? If the book never says, and you cannot imagine an answer, you are reading a belief system rather than an argument.

Open the printable version

Resource three

The source-evaluation guide

A number arrives with no parents. Here is how to work out where it came from and how much weight it can carry, in about a minute.

Fast test

Six questions to ask a source

Who made this, and what do they do all day? A statistics agency, a regulator, a university, a newspaper, a company selling the thing being measured. Each has a different reason to exist.
Who paid for it? Funded research is often good research with an interest in the answer. The funding should be findable. If it is hidden, that is the finding.
Is this the original, or a report about the original? Reporting is a map to the source. It is not the source.
What exactly was measured, and over what period? Averages hide their range. A period chosen to start in a convenient year can carry an entire argument on its own.
Can I reach it? If you cannot open the document, you are trusting somebody’s summary of it. That may be fine. It should be a conscious choice.
Does anyone credible disagree, and on what grounds? One search for the strongest objection tells you more than five searches for agreement.

How much weight each kind of source can carry

A rough ordering. There are exceptions in both directions, which is why the six questions above come first.
Kind of source	Good for	Watch out for
Statistics agencies and regulators	Rules, rates, thresholds, measured aggregates.	Definitions that differ from everyday usage, and revisions after publication.
Peer-reviewed research	Whether an effect exists, and how big it is.	Who was studied, how long ago, and whether the press release matches the paper.
Primary documents	Fees, terms, filings, what a product actually is.	Length and deliberate dullness. The important sentence is rarely the first one.
Published comparisons with a stated method	Long-run patterns across many products.	Who selected the sample, and what happened to the things that disappeared from it.
Reputable journalism	Finding the primary source, and context.	Headlines written by someone who did not read the study.
Industry research	Data nobody else collects.	An interest in the conclusion. Read the method section first.
Books	Argument, framing, and teaching.	Being cited as evidence for themselves.
Anecdote and testimonial	Illustrating an idea.	Being counted as evidence that the idea works.

Seven warning signs in one sentence each

A percentage with no denominator.
Studies show, with no study named.
A chart that starts its timeline at a suspiciously good year.
A round number that appears in many places and traces back to none.
Survivor stories used as proof, with no mention of the people who did the same thing and failed.
The word guaranteed anywhere near the word returns.
Urgency. Real evidence is still true next week.

Open the printable version

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Resource four

A plain-English glossary

Thirty-five words that money books use as though everybody already knows them. Definitions in ordinary language, with the trap that usually goes with each one.

Glossary

Words worth pinning down

Words about the money you have

Asset: Something you own that has value. The famous argument is about whether a thing that costs you money every month counts, and both sides of that argument are using the word correctly inside their own definition.
Liability: Something you owe. A debt, a loan, an obligation to pay in future.
Net worth: What you own minus what you owe. A snapshot, not a score, and it says nothing about whether you can pay this month’s bills.
Cash flow: Money actually moving in and out over a period. Many households with a healthy net worth have a difficult cash flow, and the two problems have different solutions.
Liquidity: How quickly something turns into spendable money without losing value. Cash is liquid. A house is not.
Emergency fund: Money kept accessible for the unplanned. Everyone agrees it helps. Nobody agrees on the size, which is why it is a contested claim rather than a settled one.
Inflation: A general rise in prices over time, which means the same money buys less. It is the reason keeping money still is not the same as keeping money.
Real and nominal: Nominal is the number before inflation. Real is the number after. A book that quotes long-run returns without saying which one it means has told you very little.
Opportunity cost: What you gave up by choosing this instead of that. Invisible on any statement, and often the biggest number in the decision.

Words about borrowing

Principal: The amount actually borrowed or invested, before interest.
Interest rate: The price of borrowing money, or the reward for lending it, expressed as a percentage over a period.
Annual percentage rate: A standardised yearly cost of borrowing that is meant to include certain fees, so that two offers can be compared. What counts as included varies by country, so compare like with like.
Simple and compound interest: Simple interest is charged on the original amount only. Compound interest is charged on the original amount plus the interest already added. Compounding is why debt accelerates and why long-term investing is described the way it is.
Amortisation: Paying a loan down in scheduled instalments. Early payments are mostly interest and later payments are mostly principal, which surprises almost everybody the first time they see the schedule.
Secured and unsecured debt: Secured debt is attached to something the lender can take, such as a house or a car. Unsecured debt is not, which is one reason it usually costs more.
Minimum payment: The smallest amount a lender will accept this month to keep the account in good standing. It is designed to keep the account open, not to clear the debt.
Refinancing: Replacing a debt with a different debt, usually to change the rate or the term. Lower monthly payments over a longer period can still mean paying more in total.

Words about investing

Share, also called stock or equity: A small ownership stake in a company.
Bond: A loan you make to a government or a company, usually paying interest on a schedule and returning the principal at the end.
Fund: A pooled basket of investments that many people buy into together, run by a manager for a fee.
Index and index fund: An index measures a defined slice of a market. An index fund tries to match that slice rather than beat it, which is why it usually costs less to run.
Actively managed fund: A fund where somebody chooses the holdings, aiming to beat a benchmark. Costs more. Whether the extra cost is repaid on average is one of the most examined questions in finance.
Benchmark: The yardstick a fund is measured against. Always ask which one, because a flattering benchmark can rescue almost any record.
Expense ratio, or ongoing charge: The yearly cost of holding a fund, taken from the fund whether it rises or falls. Small percentages compound in exactly the same way returns do.
Diversification: Spreading money across different things so that no single failure is decisive. It reduces the damage from being wrong. It also caps the reward for being right.
Volatility: How much a price moves around. Often used as a synonym for risk, which is a substitution worth noticing, because a permanent loss and a bumpy ride are not the same thing.
Risk tolerance and risk capacity: Tolerance is how much movement you can stand emotionally. Capacity is how much you can absorb financially without changing your life. Books that only discuss the first one are only doing half the job.
Total return: Price change plus income, such as dividends or interest. Comparing one investment’s price change to another’s total return is a common way to mislead without lying.
Rebalancing: Periodically returning a portfolio to its intended proportions, which means selling some of what went up and buying some of what did not.

Words about evidence

Average: A single number standing in for a spread. Ask what the range was, because a comfortable average can contain very uncomfortable individual outcomes.
Survivorship bias: Studying only the things that made it to the end. The funds that closed, the businesses that failed and the investors who quit are missing from most impressive charts.
Correlation and causation: Two things moving together is not proof that one causes the other. Money writing leans on this gap constantly, usually without noticing.
Base rate: How common something is in general, before you consider your specific case. Ignoring it is how a rare outcome starts to feel like a plan.
Backtest: Applying a strategy to past data to see how it would have done. Useful, and easy to tune until the past looks obedient.
Fiduciary duty: An obligation to act in your interest rather than merely to sell you something suitable. Whether an adviser owes it to you depends on your country and on the arrangement, and it is a fair thing to ask outright.

Definitions in general terms. Specific products, accounts and rules differ by country and change over time.

Open the printable version

Resource five

An honest reading list

By kind of book rather than by title, and deliberately so. Naming titles turns a reading guide into a ranking, and a ranking is exactly the thing that stops people reading widely. Learn the categories and placing a book becomes a matter of reading its contents page instead of its cover.

Eight kinds of money book. A book is usually a blend, and the blend is usually visible in the contents page.
The kind	Good at	Bad at	Read it for
The get-started guide	Plain sequencing. What to do first, second, third, without jargon.	Nuance, and any situation that is not the standard one it assumes.	Your first month, when a clear order is worth more than a perfect answer.
The frugality classic	Attention. Making the invisible visible, and taking small leaks seriously.	Scale. Spending less has a floor, and the floor is often reached before the goal is.	Habit and awareness, not for the whole plan.
The index-fund case	Arithmetic. Fees, compounding, diversification, and the long published record.	Behaviour in a bad year, and readers whose real problem is income or debt.	Understanding what most of the evidence supports, and why.
The mindset book	Motivation, and taking the emotional side of money seriously when nobody else does.	Evidence. Testimony is the usual support, and testimony from the people it failed is rarely collected.	A push, if you need one, read with the tags on.
The behavioural book	Explaining why people who know better still do the other thing.	Telling you what to do next. Diagnosis is not a plan.	Understanding the gap between the spreadsheet and the month.
The memoir or founder story	Momentum, texture, and a sense that change is possible.	Generalising. One life is one data point, however well written.	Company on a hard week. Not for method.
The textbook or official guide	Accuracy, definitions, and rules that are current for a named country.	Readability, and any sense of what to actually do on Monday.	Settling a factual question rather than forming a view.
The journalistic history	Showing how a crisis or a product actually came about, with sources.	Personal application. It explains the weather, not your umbrella.	Scepticism that is earned rather than borrowed.

How to build a shelf that argues with itself

Pick one book from a kind you already agree with. Read it properly, and notice where it stops explaining and starts asserting.
Pick one from a kind you find irritating. Read the strongest chapter, not the silliest one. The point is to find out whether the irritation survives contact.
Add one official or reference source for your own country. Free, usually dull, and the only thing on the shelf that can settle a factual dispute.
Write down the one question they all answer differently. That question is your real subject, and it is almost never the one on any of the covers.

Free before you buy anything

Your public library almost certainly holds most of the famous money books, often as ebooks you can borrow tonight. Government and regulator guides for your own country are free and are usually the most accurate thing you will read all month. Neither of those is trying to sell you a course.

Printables

Print them, pin them up, hand them out

Each of these opens as a clean page with the site furniture stripped out, ready for your browser’s print button or a save as PDF. No email, no sign-up, no watermark.

The claim-checking checklist Twelve steps for testing one statement about money. One page.

Open

Questions to ask any money book Fourteen questions to run before you trust a whole book. One page.

Open

The source-evaluation guide Six questions, a weighting table, and seven warning signs. Two pages.

Open

The plain-English glossary Thirty-five words money books use without defining. Two pages.

Open

The honest reading list Eight kinds of money book, what each is good and bad at. One page.

Open

Using these with other people

These are meant to be handed out. Teachers, librarians, tutors, community workers, parents and anyone running a money session are welcome to print them, copy them, and use them in a group, with attribution and a link.

Two suggestions from experience. First, run the checklist on a claim the group already believes, not one they already doubt, because the second version teaches nothing. Second, let the group finish with a claim they could not settle. Sitting with an honestly unresolved question is the skill, and most money education never practises it.

For reprints, translations or anything commercial, please ask first.

One more thing

If a resource here is wrong, say so

These tools are claims too. If a definition is sloppy, a table is unfair, or a warning sign is doing more harm than good, that is worth reporting and it will be fixed in public.

Report an error How we check

Educational commentary only, not financial advice. Nothing on this page is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold anything.