What Is This Money Really Costing You? (rebuilt Sept 8, 2026)

An APR here, a "factor rate" there, "just $321 a day." On one ruler, the sample's five offers for the same $40,000 run from 9.9% to about 95% APR — and the merchant cash advance that "sounds like 35%" runs nearly ten times the bank loan's rate. The credit card everyone calls expensive is the cheap end of the fast-money menu.

How it works

• One Ruler — four numbers you can read off any term sheet → total cost and TRUE APR, ranked. Fees come off cash-in-hand, where they belong
• The Payment Stress Test — the same offers converted to monthly-equivalent payments against your actual profit. The rate annoys you later; the payment schedule is what kills you now
• The Rules — the factor-rate sentence to say on the phone, term-matches-asset-life, the daily-debit danger, the one case where expensive money is rational (a true bridge with a certain payoff event), and the refi checklist to bring to the bank

Built for

Any owner holding a term sheet: trades and contractors · restaurants · e-commerce · studios · anyone the fast-money industry calls twice a week.

What you get

One .xlsx file, four tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no subscription. Not financial or lending advice — arithmetic the term sheet already implies.