Jordan Walker

A London parent who gets a pay rise from £99,000 to £130,000 ends the year poorer. The reason is a number Alistair Darling picked in 2009 that nobody has touched since.

Ask people how much of their pension is invested in Britain and they guess about 40%. The real figure is under 5%, and in the default funds at Aviva and PensionBee, a single American chip company outweighs every British company combined.

Somewhere in your house is a blue card with £3.08 on it. Multiply that by 95 million and you get TfL's least talked-about cash pile, and a surprising twin on the Bitcoin ledger.

A Briton in 1970 sat in a 12°C living room watching black-and-white telly, and still used more electricity than you do. Here is where it all went, and why the empty corner of one chart should worry us more than the fall itself.

NASA is flying to an asteroid "worth" more than the entire world economy. The scientist behind that number says it's meaningless, and her reason is the best lesson in scarcity you'll read this year.

Every card tap costs the shop about 6p, and Britain's annual bill for accepting payment has doubled in five years. Here is where the money goes, and who set the price.