What is here
79 calculators across Money, Home, Car, Everyday, Food, Shopping, Health, Math, and Education. Pay and tax, a mortgage or loan payment, whether a house or a car fits your take-home pay, savings and retirement projections, energy and fuel costs, home projects, health formulas, everyday date and time math, unit conversion, and school grades.
Who maintains this
CostAnswer is independently built and maintained. The person who writes the methodology and keeps the engines current is a software builder and researcher, not a licensed financial advisor, CPA, attorney, or clinician.
There is no licensed advisory staff, no made-up roster of CFAs or CPAs, and no invented newsroom, and nothing here pretends to be written by one. Pages are signed CostAnswer editorial: the same person builds the calculators, loads each new government release, checks it against the last one, and answers correction reports.
If a number is wrong, the Method version and Data snapshot id under Technical details are how we pin it. Contact is the inbox for that, not a place to get a second opinion on a loan or a diagnosis.
What makes an answer trustworthy here
Three things sit under every result. The formula, written out step by step, so you can follow the arithmetic. The version of the engine that produced it, so the same inputs give the same answer tomorrow. And, for anything that uses public data, the dataset, its observation period, and the date it was published.
Each calculator page also has a topic guide, a FAQ, a glossary, and the limits of the model, written for that tool rather than copied across the catalogue.
Editorial standards
- We do not invent credentials, staff bios, or endorsements.
- Every calculator names the formula version that produced the result.
- Figures you did not type come from a dated, hashed copy of a U.S. public dataset, or the page says they came from you.
- Estimates, projections, and planning bands are labelled as such. They are not quotes, filings, diagnoses, or approvals.
- When a model leaves something out, that omission sits next to the answer, not only in the footer.
- Corrections are welcome. A report we can check includes the Method version and the Data snapshot id.
The methodology page is the operational version of the same rules.
How the numbers are tested
Every engine has tests that check it against worked examples. Official datasets are fetched, stored, and hashed; the site refuses to build if a stored file no longer matches the hash it was reviewed under. Nothing is fetched live while you type, so a result cannot change underneath you because a provider had an outage.
Where the data comes from
Freddie Mac for mortgage rates, EIA for electricity and gasoline, BLS for consumer prices and inflation, IRS and SSA for tax and retirement limits, HUD for Fair Market Rents, Census and BEA for local income and price levels, USDA for food plans, GSA for CONUS per diem. Each one is listed with its period and publication date on the data page. Those agencies do not operate this site.
How current the data is
Each dataset has a known release schedule. When a provider is due to publish again and this site has not caught up, the page says so rather than presenting an older figure as the current one.
What this is not
These are calculators, not advice. Nothing here is legal, tax, medical, or financial advice, and no result is a lender decision, a diagnosis, or a prepared return. Where a model leaves something out (depreciation, healthcare, withholding tables) the page says so next to the answer instead of in the small print. The user agreement applies to every page.
How the site is paid for
The calculators are free and do not need an account. The site is paid for by advertising in marked spaces: a banner, a sidebar and one slot within the page, never between a form and its answer. When no ad is running, the space stays empty rather than filled with something that looks like one.
Some money and credit tools may show partner offers next to the result. They are advertising, marked as such, and a disclosure appears on any page that carries one. They are never the calculator’s answer, and they are not financial advice.
Corrections
If a figure looks wrong, report it. Under Technical details, each result prints a Method version and a Data snapshot id so the problem can be pinned to one engine and one copy of the data. The same page takes a calculator you want added, a complaint, or a suggestion. Contact and requests. Common questions are on the FAQ.