About

How It Started

Hello from the creator of The Finance Why!

I am a student at the University of Minnesota studying Financial and Actuarial Math. My interest in personal finance didn’t start from working in finance or from college education. It started because I was curious. The more I learned about topics such as credit scores, loans, mortgages, and investing, the more I realized many people tell you what to do, not why to do. It may sound funny, but that’s genuinely how it started. My curiosity led me to spend countless hours going down personal finance rabbit holes. Credit cards, interest rates, mortgages, credit scores, all the nitty-gritty fascinated me.

Why The Finance Why?

Most personal finance websites tell you what to do. They may say something like, “Build an emergency fund” or "Pay your credit card on time.” While that is important information, I’ve always been interested in a different question.

Why?

Instead of “Pay your credit card on time,” I asked, “Why do credit scores change?” Why do lenders care about Debt-to-Income? What is Loan-to-Value and why is it so important in lending decisions? The more I kept digging, the more I realized understanding the reasoning behind such complex systems, such as finance, makes it much easier to understand the whole picture and make informed decisions.

My Goal

My goal isn’t to tell you what you should think or what financial decisions you should make. I want to explain how financial systems work, why they exist, and the trade-offs behind different choices and paths. I want to inform you about how various terms and systems within the bigger financial system so you can understand your own situation and move forward with confidence.

Whether you’re building credit, buying your first home, simply curious, or even a financial expert, I hope this site makes you make more confident financial decisions and gives you a nice read. If this website helps you ask one more “why?” before making a financial decision, then I’ve accomplished what I set out to do.

Most personal finance websites tell you what to do. The Finance Why explains why.

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