Course 1 · Foundations
Money, Time and Interest
Money, Time and Interest is Kitalpha Course 1: 6 available lessons, about 2.5 hours, free. Every lesson is anchored to a live Kitalpha record (U.S. Treasury yields, the FOMC target range and the CPI release). General educational information only.
What an interest rate is, why a dollar today and a dollar next year are different amounts, and how compounding, discounting, inflation and quoting conventions change the number you read on a Treasury record. Six lessons on live Kitalpha data.
What you will be able to do
- Define nominal and real interest rates and tell them apart on a live Treasury record.
- Calculate a future value under simple and compound interest from a quoted yield.
- Explain why present value discounts future cash, and compute one from a live yield.
- Interpret a policy interest rate from a central-bank record, and distinguish it from a retail rate.
- Distinguish a quoted annual rate from the effective annual rate it implies at a given compounding frequency.
- Describe how inflation erodes purchasing power, using a live consumer-price release.
Audience: Complete beginners; no prerequisites. Anyone who reads a yield, a policy rate or an inflation figure and wants to know what the number means.
Lessons
- 01 What an interest rate is: the price of time
Concept: interest as the price of time · 8 min · done
- 02 Future value and compounding
Concept: compounding · 9 min · done
- 03 Present value: what a future dollar is worth now
Concept: present value · 9 min · done
- 04 Nominal versus real: what inflation leaves of a yield
Concept: nominal versus real interest · 9 min · done
- 05 APR versus effective rate: what a quoted rate leaves out
Concept: compounding frequency · 9 min · done
- 06 Inflation and purchasing power: a level and its rate of change
Concept: inflation as the rate of change of a price index · 9 min · done
Spaced review
After each lesson, review sets fall due at 1, 7 and 30 days — cumulative, and interleaved across lessons and record types. Due sets appear here.
Mastery task
The course ends with a transfer task: 6 items on the newest Kitalpha record you have not seen, pass mark 80%. On a fail, the missed items map to their lessons and a review of those lessons is scheduled before a retake. A completion page is issued only on mastery. Go to the mastery task →
Optional: plan your study (once)
Write when, where and how you will study, plus one obstacle and how you will get past it. Stored on this device only.
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