Starting at the start

[whatausername]

So here's a thread I feel uncomfortable making, especially as the advice might be rather robust and I am not in a very robust state right now!

Where/at what should I look for a basic financial education? I mean the fundamentals, like how to work out how much interest you're paying a week (is it APR/52 x credit card balance?), understanding savings accounts etc. I'd like to "graduate" to understanding mortgages, pensions and maybe even investments one day! But starting at the start, where should I go?

Separately but not unrelated, has anyone read any good books on understanding financial attitudes and the reasons behind people's different approaches to money?

1. Meaningful Money Podcast
2. Martin Lewis’s Money Saving Expert blogs
3. Dave Ramsey (US centric and set in his ideas but still)
4. Ramit Sethi (also has some certain very set ideas but never mind).
5. This is Money
6. MSE forums

The categories to understand at the bare minimum -

1. Pensions and how to act on them now as now always better than later
2. Debt and debt reduction (Dave Ramsey snowball method or other approaches)
3. Budgeting
4. bank accounts and interest rates
5. Basic tracker index funds

Second the previous advice. Also Moneysaving Expert does a free online personal finance course and a free downloadable textbook that is aimed at schools but would be useful to anyone wanting to learn about money management.

The Meaningful Money podcast is excellent and they've just finished a series exploring the Personal Finance flowchart in detail, which can be used as a 'to do list' for sorting your finances.

https://ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/

On credit cards, savings etc, for credit cards, you shouldn't need to worry about the APR, because if you use it as recommended, pay it off in full every month, you don't pay any interest, so it could be a million percent and it wouldn't matter.

But if you do have credit card debt, look on Moneysaving Expert to hopefully transfer to a 0% deal. Only if you can't do that do you need to worry about how much credit card interest you're paying and then you just look on your statement - no maths required.

For savings, Moneysaving Expert will tell you which is the highest rate and also explain the difference between instant access, fixed rate, ISAs etc.