Documentaries about the hidden math of everyday money
The price is never the whole math.
Every episode follows one everyday purchase back to the question nobody puts on the sticker: who actually pays, and who keeps the rest? Primary sources, plain arithmetic, no hype.
Pick an object
A card, a ticket, a receipt. Something you already own or were offered this week.
Find the filing
Every number comes from a primary source: a 10-K, a court case, a government dataset.
Follow the money
Who pays, who keeps the rest, and what that means for your wallet.
Black Friday 2026
The list, before the day
Decide what you need before the sale starts. Our picks for the week, with no fake discounts and no prices that go stale.
Go Deeper
The video is the start. This is the rest.
Our e-books and the reading we trust, for when twenty minutes is not enough to fix the math in your own wallet.
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Watch nowEpisode 01 · Who pays?
Credit Card Rewards Are Paid For By Poor People (mostly)
The points feel free. The money to pay for them comes from somewhere, and it is not from the people collecting them.
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New episodes every Tuesday and Friday
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"Every price tag is the answer to a question you were never asked."
Inconvenient Math, a series about the numbers behind the numbers.