We learned about money the hard way. We started this blog so you don’t have to.

For many years my father, my uncle, my elder brother, and I ran a family publishing business. It was well-settled and profitable, and because it was, we never once worried about money. We earned well, lived comfortably, and like many families who have never faced a financial crisis, saving never felt like a priority.

In 2011, everything changed. A change in government policy ended the business almost overnight, and the income we had relied on for years disappeared. Desperate to recover, we mortgaged our home and borrowed ₹10 lakh from United Bank of India to start a new venture publishing books for schoolchildren. Against an established competitor, and with too little capital, we could not compete. That business closed in 2017.

We could no longer pay the bank EMIs, and in 2019 the bank began proceedings to auction our home. It tried three times and found no buyer. What followed were years of discipline and collective effort. I joined InfluxIQ Tech Pvt. Ltd. as a Project Manager in 2018, my elder brother moved to Dubai to work in a restaurant, we sold our old publishing house, and friends and relatives lent what they could. Part of both our salaries went toward the debt month after month.

It took a decade, and the combined effort of our whole family, to recover. That is when I understood what financial preparation really means.

In March 2021, after a decade of effort, we cleared the full debt and interest, and the bank returned the deed to our home. That ten-year journey, from the collapse in 2011 to closing the chapter in 2021, changed how I think about money permanently.

It was during those recovery years, managing my own finances carefully while contributing to the family’s, that I genuinely learned what financial planning means. Not as theory, as something with real consequences. I learned to save, to budget, to understand what compound interest actually does to debt and to savings. I researched everything I could find about personal finance because I had to.

The Money Decoded exists because I wish someone had explained these things in plain language before 2011. Not complicated financial theories. Not jargon-heavy advice meant for professionals. Just clear, honest explanations of how money works, the basics that can protect a family when life goes wrong. Everything on this site is the research I wish I had done earlier.

The Money Decoded is a personal finance research blog. We are not financial advisors. We are not certified planners. We are people who learned hard lessons about money and now spend our time researching personal finance topics and explaining them in plain English for everyday people.

Everything we publish is

• ✓Thoroughly researched from authoritative sources
• ✓Written in plain language, no jargon without explanation
• ✓Focused on education, not advice
• ✓Honest about what we know and what we don't

This blog is for anyone who:

• Has never been taught how money actually works
• Feels overwhelmed or intimidated by financial content
• Wants to understand budgeting, saving, or debt without needing a finance degree
• Is starting from scratch and just needs clear, simple explanations
• Wants to be more prepared for whatever life throws at them

You don’t need to be rich to start. You don’t need a background in finance. You just need to start somewhere. This is that somewhere.

Before writing anything on this site, we research it properly. Our sources include:

• Investopedia
• NerdWallet
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
• Reserve Bank of India
• Internal Revenue Service
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
• Peer-reviewed academic finance research
• Books written by certified financial professionals

We cite our sources in every article so you can verify anything we write and explore further if you want to.