Interest Rates Made Simple

One number, set by a small committee, decides what your mortgage costs, what your savings earn, and whether the economy grows or stalls. Most people have no idea how it works.

Between 2021 and 2023, central banks raised interest rates at the fastest pace in a generation. Mortgages doubled overnight. Savers finally got paid again. Asset prices crashed and recovered. And almost nobody understood why.

Interest Rates Made Simple is the guide that fixes that - written for anyone who has ever wondered what a central bank decision actually means for their money, without jargon, without equations, and without prior knowledge required.

Inside this book you will discover:

• What an interest rate really is - the price of money itself - and why it exists at all
• How central banks set rates and why it takes 18 months to feel the full effect
• How to choose between fixed and variable mortgages without forecasting the future
• Why your bank raises your mortgage rate quickly but your savings rate slowly - and what to do about it
• What bonds are and why the bond market matters more than the stock market
• How the yield curve has predicted every US recession in the past 60 years
• The strange decade when interest rates went to zero - and below - and what it left behind
• Why Federal Reserve decisions in Washington affect mortgages in Madrid and Manchester
• A practical playbook for what to do with your money when rates rise, fall, or hold steady

With real examples from the 1970s, Volcker's 20% shock, the zero-rate decade, and the 2022-2023 hiking cycle, this book turns interest rates from background noise into useful information you can act on.

Stop being surprised by central bank decisions. Start using them.