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Finance Lessons

Loans & Mortgages

Final Exam: The Loan Gauntlet

A graded, locked capstone — 24 one-shot questions spanning every Loans & Mortgages lesson: loan anatomy, amortization, fixed vs variable rates and the true cost of credit, down payment, LTV and fees, and refinancing, default and foreclosure.

15 min Updated Jun 3, 2026

This is where the safety nets come down. No pretests, no warm-up analogies, no “guess before reading” — just the course, checking whether any of it stuck. Everything you need, the previous five lessons already taught you. Read each option twice; the trap is usually the one that’s 90% right.

Warning:

How this exam works

This is a graded exam. Questions come one at a time. Once you submit an answer it is final — there is no going back, no second try, and a wrong answer simply fails that question. Your score stays hidden until the end, where you need 70% to pass. Read every option twice before you commit.

Question 1 of 24

What are the four levers that define any loan?

Select an answer to continue.

When you’ve passed, here’s the whole course collapsed into one map — the shape of everything you can now reason about:

Big picture

Loans & Mortgages

  • Loans & Mortgages
    • Anatomy
      • Principal · rate · term · payment
      • Secured vs unsecured · collateral · lien
      • A mortgage = big, long, amortizing, secured
    • Amortization
      • Interest on the balance, principal gets the rest
      • Early payments mostly interest; split flips
      • Total interest = M·n − P
    • Cost of credit
      • Fixed vs variable (ARM)
      • Note rate vs APR vs APY
      • Term trade-off · the monthly-payment trap
    • Upfront money
      • Down payment · LTV = loan / value
      • 80% LTV → PMI (protects the lender)
      • Closing costs · points · break-even
    • When it changes
      • Extra principal · prepayment penalties
      • Refinancing · break-even · clock reset
      • Default → foreclosure → deficiency · underwater
From the anatomy of a loan to the machinery of amortization, the true cost of credit, the upfront money and fees, and what happens when the deal changes or breaks.
Success:

You finished Loans & Mortgages

You can now read a loan from the inside: price the four levers, decode an amortization schedule, tell the note rate from the APR, weigh a 15-year against a 30-year, size a down payment against the PMI line, and run a refinance break-even — and you know exactly what default, foreclosure and negative equity mean. No loan document can bluff you now.

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