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slash setup welcome to the nerd wallet smart money podcast where we answer your

personal finance questions

and help you feel a little smarter about what you do with your money. I'm Sean Piles.

And I'm Liz Weston. Want us to answer your money questions? Well, send them our way. Call or text

us on the Nerd Hotline at 901-7306373. That's 901-730 Nerd. Or email us podcast at nerdwallet.com. And hit that subscribe button to get new episodes delivered to your devices every Monday. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review. This episode, Liz and I are wrapping up our hashtag new money goal series with a conversation about what home buying will look like in 2021 with mortgage nerd Holden

Lewis. Spoiler alert, it's going to be competitive. But first, an hour this week in your

money segment, Liz and I are talking about NerdWallet's 2021 Best of Awards. Each year, NerdWollet

puts together a list of the best financial products from savings accounts to cashback cars and even car insurance.

And while our nerds judge each product based on its own criteria, the guiding principle of what

makes a best product is that it's consumer friendly and helps you take control of your money.

So to help you, our listeners, get the most of the hard work that all of our nerds have done.

Liz and I are going to give you some background about the awards and how they can help you make smart money moves. Yeah, a lot

goes into it. More than four dozen of our writers and editors work on the best of awards, and they

come up with rubrics to judge all these different financial products. For mortgages, for example, the evaluation looks at the loan types that are available and the

online capabilities of the lenders, the online rate information, it looks at customer service,

and it complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

These rubrics are massive.

...