Editorial Policy
Every figure on this site comes from a primary source, and this page tells you which sources, how often they are re-checked, who is accountable for the result, and what happens when we get something wrong.
Who reviews this content
All financial content on FinanceToolz.com is written and reviewed by Alexandre Bernier, CFP®, CIM®, PFP®, a financial planner with 18 years in banking and wealth management. Those designations can be checked independently, and the author page links the registries to check them in.
Every calculator, state page and article carries a visible “Reviewed by” byline and a last-updated date. The date reflects when that page's figures or explanations last changed. It is not refreshed to make a page look current: if nothing has changed in six months, the page says so.
Source hierarchy
Sources are ranked. When two disagree, the higher one wins, even when the lower one is more recent or easier to reach. Aggregators and secondary summaries are used to find things, never to establish a figure.
- 1
Internal Revenue Service
Federal tax rates, brackets, contribution limits and thresholds. Revenue procedures and notices are preferred over newsroom summaries of them.
- 2
Social Security Administration
COLA, the taxable wage base, the retirement earnings test, benefit maximums and PIA bend points.
- 3
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Medicare Part B and Part D premiums and the IRMAA schedule.
- 4
Department of Labor
FLSA overtime and exempt-status thresholds, and ERISA plan rules.
- 5
Department of Education / Federal Student Aid
Federal student loan interest rates, repayment plans and forgiveness rules.
- 6
HUD, FHA and VA
FHA loan limits, MIP, HECM lending limits and VA funding fees. Mortgagee letters are the primary source.
- 7
Federal Housing Finance Agency
Conforming loan limits and house price indices.
- 8
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Mortgage disclosure rules, TRID timing and consumer-protection framing.
- 9
FDIC and SIPC
Deposit insurance and brokerage account protection limits.
- 10
State departments of revenue
State income tax rates, brackets and standard deductions. A state agency always outranks an aggregator, including where the two disagree.
- 11
Federal Reserve
Interest rate data, the H.15 series, and household finance survey data.
- 12
Tax Foundation
Cross-checking state tax changes only. Never the primary source for a rate, and it is outranked by the state agency.
What “verified against a primary source” means here
A figure goes on the site only after we have read it in the document that sets it. A news report about that document is not a substitute, and neither is another calculator that appears to agree.
Occasionally a primary document is not available at the time of review. In that case we confirm the figure against at least two independent sources that agree, and we still cite the primary document so you can check it directly. Where a figure carries any remaining uncertainty, the page says so rather than presenting it as settled.
Update cadence
US financial figures do not all change on 1 January. They arrive on a schedule set by whichever agency publishes them, and this is the schedule the site works to.
November to January
IRS annual inflation adjustments (the revenue procedure, usually published in October) and the retirement plan limits notice. Every bracket, deduction, credit and contribution limit on the site is re-checked against the primary document.
October
The SSA cost-of-living announcement, which sets the COLA, the taxable wage base, the retirement earnings test limits and the benefit maximums for the following year.
November
CMS publishes Medicare Part B premiums and the IRMAA schedule.
December
HUD mortgagee letters setting FHA and HECM loan limits, and the FHFA conforming loan limit announcement.
May to July
Federal student loan interest rates for the award year beginning 1 July, set from the May 10-year Treasury auction.
January
HHS poverty guidelines, and state tax changes taking effect on 1 January.
Event-driven
Legislation. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act rewrote the SALT cap, the estate exemption, the Child Tax Credit, 529 rules and the entire federal student loan repayment system, and every affected page was revisited rather than waiting for the annual cycle.
Corrections policy
A calculator that is confidently wrong is worse than no calculator, because it is trusted. When an error is found here, it gets fixed, and the fix is not quietly slipped in: the page's last-updated date moves, and where the error was material the corrected page says what the number is now and why it changed.
Report an error through the contact form. Reports are triaged within a week. If you can, include the page URL, the figure you think is wrong, and the source you are comparing it against. That turns a week of investigation into an afternoon.
Assumptions are stated, not hidden. Where a result depends on a rate of return, a compounding convention, a poverty guideline or a cost-of-living index, the page names it. Where two conventions would give different answers, the page uses one and says which.
Bad news is reported as bad news. If a refinance costs you money, the page says it costs you money, in red, with a minus sign. There is no house view that any particular product is good.
Independence and funding
The calculators are free, require no sign-up, and collect no personal financial data: the numbers you type stay in your browser. See the privacy policy.
No lender, brokerage, insurer or plan provider pays for placement, and no calculator result is weighted toward any product. Where a page names a specific fund, broker or provider, it is because that example is the clearest one available, not because of a commercial relationship.
FinanceToolz is an educational resource, not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, CPA firm or lender. Nothing on the site is investment, tax or legal advice.