Category 1
Interest-producing investments
You lend money and receive interest — from a bank deposit all the way out to a private note.
Everything in this category is paid the same way, so what separates one page from the next is the wrapper rather than where the money comes from: how much it takes to start, how quickly you could turn it back into cash, who does the work, how it is taxed, and how it fails. The line on each card says whether the income keeps arriving once it is set up or whether somebody has to keep working for it. If the mechanism itself is new to you, the course spends a whole lesson on it and is a shorter way in than any single page here.
High-Yield Savings Accounts
A bank or credit-union deposit account that pays interest on idle cash at a rate the bank can change on any given day.
Read →Money-Market Accounts and Funds
Two different things with similar names: an insured bank deposit account, and a mutual fund that buys very short-term debt and passes the interest through.
Read →Certificates of Deposit
A time deposit: you agree to leave money at a bank for a fixed term, and the bank fixes the interest rate for that whole term.
Read →Treasury Bills, Notes, and Bonds
Direct loans to the US federal government, sold at auction, paying either a discount at maturity or a fixed coupon twice a year.
Read →Municipal Bonds
Loans to states, cities, school districts and public authorities, where the interest is normally exempt from federal income tax.
Read →Corporate Bonds
Loans to companies, documented by an indenture, paying a fixed coupon twice a year and ranking ahead of the company's stock in a bankruptcy.
Read →Agency Bonds
Debt issued by government-sponsored enterprises and federal agencies — close to Treasury credit, usually a little more yield, often callable.
Read →Mortgage-Backed Securities
A share in a pool of home loans: borrowers make monthly payments, and the interest and principal are passed through to you.
Read →Bond Mutual Funds and ETFs
A pooled portfolio of bonds that pays out the interest it collects, usually monthly, with no maturity date of its own.
Read →Private Credit Funds
Pooled vehicles that lend directly to companies instead of buying traded bonds, usually at a floating rate on senior secured loans.
Read →Direct Business Lending
Lending your own money to an operating business under a note you negotiate, rather than through a fund or a public market.
Read →Peer-to-Peer Lending
Funding slices of consumer or small-business loans through an online platform that handles origination, servicing and collections.
Read →Promissory Notes
The underlying instrument of private lending: a written promise to repay a stated sum with interest, on stated terms.
Read →Seller-Financed Loans
You sell an asset — usually property or a business — and act as the lender, collecting the purchase price in instalments with interest.
Read →Hard-Money Lending
Short-term loans secured by real estate, priced on the property's value rather than the borrower's income, usually with points plus a high interest rate.
Read →