Changelog

What changed, and what I fixed

Every change to the calculators that you might notice, newest first. When I find that a calculator got something wrong, the fix goes here with a plain description of what was wrong, so you can tell whether a result you saw earlier was affected. The list starts in August 2026.

October 2026

• Changed Every calculator now opens with the question it answers, in plain words (“Should you keep renting or buy?”), and one sentence on what you’ll see. The method notes that used to sit there moved into “Show the math”.
• New A “See your answer” link under each calculator’s title jumps straight to the result, so on a phone you no longer scroll past every field to find it.
• Changed Where a video uses a calculator’s example exactly, the example now carries the person’s name from that video (“Try Priya and Sam’s numbers”).
• Changed On a phone, the homepage opens with the welcome instead of the list of six categories. The same list is further down the page.
• Fixed The Monthly Budget description promised a debt-to-income ratio, which the calculator doesn’t show. It describes the housing and transportation shares it does show.
• Fixed Active vs Index labeled the index fund’s whole after-tax lead as “tax drag”, and its summary said the tax alone was worth that much. The lead also includes the index’s higher return. The card is now “Index Fund’s After-Tax Lead”, and the summary gives the tax part on its own ($61,353 of the $101,450 in the example).
• Fixed On Roth vs Traditional, the card called “Tax Avoided at Retirement (Roth)” showed the tax the Traditional account pays at retirement. It’s now labeled that way.
• Changed The down payment notes on Mortgage, Rent vs Buy and Home Affordability now say that these calculators leave out PMI, which most lenders add with less than 20% down, and point to the PMI calculator.
• Fixed A few ranges read oddly (“ages 60, 63”, “3, 6 months”, “weight 0, 10”). They now read “60 to 63”, “3 to 6” and “0 to 10”.
• Changed Under the hood: the pages no longer contain inline JavaScript event handlers, so the site’s security policy can now refuse to run any script the site didn’t ship. Nothing you see changes.
• Fixed On a phone, Business Cash Flow’s income and one-time event rows were too narrow for a five-digit amount ($12,000 showed as “12…”). On small screens each row now takes two lines, so the whole amount fits.
• Fixed On Credit Card Rewards, each spending amount and its points-per-dollar box now line up.
• Fixed On Business Cash Flow and School District vs Private School, dollar amounts in rows you add (an expense, a one-time event, another child) now show the formatted amount underneath, like every other dollar field, and the boxes in each row line up.
• Changed Re-ran the accessibility tests on all 39 calculators, the guides and every other page. The Accessibility page now says 15 October and 39 calculators.
• Fixed On a computer, pressing Tab to reach the on/off comparison switches on Auto Loan, Car Operating Cost, Student Loans and Effective Wage scrolled the page to the wrong spot, and on three of them the switch ended up off the screen. The page now scrolls to the switch.
• Fixed If you had opened a calculator before 6 October, your browser could show a “too many redirects” error on that calculator’s link afterwards. Those links open normally again.
• Changed The Mortgage calculator’s buy-versus-rent cards now compare net worth at the end of the loan. If you rent, the cash you would have spent to close is invested, and each month whichever choice costs less invests the difference. The old card counted the down payment as gone if you rented, which flattered buying. There are new fields for rent increases and the investment return.
• Changed The Mortgage calculator’s agent fee now starts at 0%, since the seller usually pays the agents. The field is now “Buyer’s Agent Fee You Pay”, for when you are paying your own agent.
• Changed Student Loans now starts on daily simple interest, the way federal Direct Loans accrue. Monthly and annual are still in the list.
• Changed Car Depreciation: the Porsche 911 curve is now labeled as a best case, with the five-year figures iSeeCars measured beside it. The used-car curve, which had a used car losing only 1.5% a year, now loses about 5% a year.
• Changed The Upsize or Downsize example now has 20 years left on the current loan instead of assuming a new 30-year loan.
• Changed The guides now follow one person through each decision, the same people as the videos: Dani’s two job offers, Kim and Dev’s first mortgage, Ethan and the SUV. The figures didn’t change.
• New Cost Per Use calculator. It works out what each use of something really costs once the price, resale value, upkeep and the growth that money could have earned are counted, compares that with renting each time, and finds the break-even. It can also price just an upgrade, like an SUV instead of a sedan.
• New A Work & Life category. Effective Wage, Business Cash Flow and Values-Based Spending moved into it; their links didn’t change.
• New “What you gain / What it costs” on the calculators that weigh one choice against another, so both sides of the decision sit next to each other.
• New Three guides: what a $400,000 mortgage really costs, how compound interest works, and the 401(k) match versus the maximum.
• New A guide to cost per use: what something really costs each time you use it, and when owning beats renting.
• New A “checked against” note, with the source, on the five calculators that rely on rules that change: 401(k) limits, Social Security claiming rules, the EV tax credit, PMI removal and the 2026 tax rates.
• New This changelog.
• Fixed Money Longevity’s “Annual Withdrawal (Year 20)” showed the amount for year 21. It now shows year 20.
• Fixed Early Retirement now labels its FI target as today’s dollars, since it sits beside nest-egg figures in future dollars.
• Fixed Car Affordability’s formula notes said the 20/4/10 rule allows a five-year loan. The rule is four years.
• Fixed Monthly Budget’s notes now say the lenders’ 28% and 36% rules use gross income, while this calculator uses take-home pay.
• Fixed Updated three hint figures: US life expectancy (CDC 2024 data), a typical 401(k) match, and the usual cost of renters insurance.
• Fixed The car affordability and Coast FIRE guides now match their calculators. The car guide applies the 10% rule to the payment, with a separate check on total car costs. The Coast FIRE guide corrects its figures for how age changes the number.
• Fixed Save and Share refused any amount with cents, like $115.50, saying to fix invalid inputs when nothing on screen was wrong. Cents now save and share on every calculator.
• Changed The About page no longer repeats its category list as a grid of cards.
• Changed The About page, Terms and Privacy Policy now allow for ads or referral links in the future instead of ruling them out. Any link that earns money will be labeled, and nobody paying has a say in how the calculators work.

October 1, 2026

• Fixed The calculation counter went up with almost every keystroke. It now counts each calculator once per visit, and it moved to the top of the homepage.
• Fixed The Debt Payoff Planner’s example quietly loaded a fourth debt, so its numbers didn’t match the three-debt guide. The example and the guide now agree.
• Fixed The Rent vs Buy guide still quoted figures from before the security-deposit fix below. It now matches the calculator.
• Changed An accessibility pass against WCAG 2.2 AA, and a new Accessibility page that says what was tested and what wasn’t.
• Changed The site speaks as one person, because it is one person. The Terms and Privacy Policy still say “we”.
• Changed The formula sections are now called “Show the math”.
• Changed Automotive opens with what a car costs to own (Operating Costs, then Depreciation) before financing.
• Changed Each calculator shows Save and Share up top, with Saved Scenarios, Compare, Reset and Print under More.
• Changed Returning visitors land on the homepage with a link back to the last calculator they used. Only which calculator was open is remembered, never the numbers.
• Changed The homepage shows one real worked example instead of a list of features.

September 24, 2026

• Changed The text across the site was rewritten in plainer language.
• New The logo now sits in the header.

September 18, 2026

Most of these came out of a line-by-line review of every calculator.

• Fixed Rent vs Buy handed the renter’s security deposit back at the end without ever charging it up front, which made renting look better than it was.
• Fixed In 20 calculators, leaving a required field empty was treated as zero and still produced a confident answer. They now ask for the missing number instead.
• Fixed Four calculators gave two different answers on the same page: Refinance, Business Cash Flow, EV vs Gas and the Social Security Optimizer. Each now uses one answer throughout.
• Fixed Six more calculators contradicted themselves in narrower cases: Annual Fee Break-even, School District vs Private School, Effective Wage, Student Loans, Card Rewards and Debt Payoff. For example, Effective Wage could show $4,000/hr on an $80,000 salary when paid time off was set to 52 weeks, with no explanation. It now says the time off was capped and why.
• Fixed Eighteen formula explanations described different math from what the calculator actually ran. They now match.
• Fixed Active vs Index’s break-even taxed losses, which its main result didn’t.
• Fixed Four rules corrected: PMI now also ends at the loan’s midpoint, as the Homeowners Protection Act requires; 401(k) catch-up contributions no longer count against the overall annual cap; the Social Security Optimizer accepts full retirement ages in months, the way SSA sets them; and Student Loans’ federal option now charges interest the way Direct Loans do.
• Fixed On phones, three calculators hid half their results.
• Fixed The Privacy Policy and Terms pages returned “page not found” at their own addresses.

Early September 2026

• Fixed Some shared links and saved scenarios didn’t restore the numbers that were saved. They now do.
• New Each calculator’s main result now comes first, in a larger card.
• New An explanation on every input, and on the results that use a term most people wouldn’t know.
• New Deleting a saved scenario asks you to tap again, and Reset offers Undo.
• New Guides, linked from the calculators they go with.
• Changed “Rent vs Own” is now “Rent vs Buy”, the name people search for.

August 2026

• New Effective Wage, the 38th calculator.
• Fixed A link straight to a calculator, from a search result or a shared link, opened a different calculator.
• Fixed On phones, tapping a category in the menu closed the menu before you could pick a calculator.
• New The About page got its own address, /about.

Small wording fixes and behind-the-scenes work aren’t listed. If you spot something wrong, the contact form on the About page reaches me directly.