Five Brains Digital

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The free guides

These are complete guides, not samples. Read them on a screen, download the PDF, or print them and hand them out. Nothing is held back, nothing is asked for in return.

They are set in 16-point type — larger than an ordinary paperback, on purpose — and every fact in them names the body that published it and the date it was checked. If you work at an agency, a library, a church or a clinic, you are welcome to print copies for the people you serve. That is what they are for.


Admitted, or Observation? Free

29 pages · large print · read online or download

A person can spend four nights in a hospital bed and still not count as "admitted" — and that one word decides whether Medicare pays for the nursing home afterwards. Most families find out weeks later, from a bill. This covers both statuses, what each one costs, the three notices the hospital owes you, the appeal route that did not exist before 2025, and the review-organisation phone number for every state.

Download the PDF Read it here first

The Scam Sheet Free

A newsletter · six issues so far · all free to read

The scams actually in circulation right now — how each one works, the tells that give it away, and a recovery walkthrough by payment method if it has already happened. Sourced to the FTC, the FBI's IC3, AARP and state attorneys general. No affiliate links, no sponsors.

Read it — free See all six issues

Stop Retyping the AI Free

24 pages · large print · a workbook you can write on

You ask the AI for a clean document. What lands in Word or Google Docs is full of stars and hash marks, or opens with “Certainly! Here’s your document:” — so you spend six minutes cleaning up the thing that was supposed to save you twenty. It was never the model’s fault. This is the setting Google ships switched off, the export buttons almost nobody looks for, and three commands you paste in to make the text arrive right the first time.

Download the PDF More like this

More are coming

New free guides get added here as they are finished — this page is where they land, so it is worth a look now and then. If you would rather be told than remember to check, The Scam Sheet is our free newsletter on the frauds currently going around, and every new free guide is announced in it.

Get the newsletter — free

Printing these for other people

Print them, photocopy them, leave them on a table. The covers are deliberately plain so a copier does not eat toner on them, and every page carries the address of this site, so whoever picks one up can find the rest. We ask nothing for it and there is nothing to sign.


The guides that are not free

Alongside the free ones there is a paid line, priced low on purpose and kept that way. People reading them are usually already paying for care they did not plan for, and a guide about that should not be one more expense to weigh up.

The Gray Age

Ten guides on later life and its paperwork — hospitals, Medicare, dementia, estates, discounts nobody advertises, and clearing a house. For the person living it and the family helping. Most are $5–$10.

Clock Off

Work, without the reverence. Interruptions, calendars, AI that half-works, and keeping the job from following you home.