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What this site is and isn't.

2026-10-18. The tip page and its on-chain Bitcoin address were removed, with every link to them: the site footer, About, Disclosures, How This Site Makes Money, the Debasement Dashboard and Final Word. About said the site was funded entirely by voluntary Bitcoin donations; it is funded out of pocket, and About now says so. Old links to /tip/ redirect to How This Site Makes Money.

2026-10-18. Cash pages restamped. Where to Keep Cash dated the Fed's target range to June and April 2026 (3.50% to 3.75%) while the calculators cite the 3.75% to 4.00% range set on September 16, 2026; it now uses the current range, and its yields are mid-October 2026 snapshots: top savings accounts about 3.9% to 4.27% APY (was about 3.8% to 4.15%, and 3 to 4% as of April 2026), SPAXX 3.50%, FZFXX 3.54% and FDLXX 3.54% seven-day yields on October 15, 2026 (were 3.29%, about 3.20% and 3.27% on April 29, 2026), T-bills about 4.1% to 4.5% (was about 3.7% to 4.0%) and CDs of a year or less about 4.0% to 4.5% (was about 3.8% to 4.3%). Saving for a House now gives the Amex savings rate as 3.20% on October 16, 2026 (was about 3 to 4% as of April 2026). Room for Error no longer says a savings account earns 4-5%. The emergency fund now has one rule on every page: a high-yield savings account by default, or a government money-market fund if your cash is at a brokerage, never CDs, T-bills or I-bonds. How to Structure Your Banking had called money-market funds not ideal for it, the Emergency Fund guide had allowed a T-bill ladder, and I-Bonds and T-Bills had suggested I-bonds for it.

2026-10-18. Sequence of Returns called a 2 to 5 year cash and bond buffer the most important mitigation, while the FIRE guide listed cash buckets under what does not solve sequence risk. Both pages now carry the same paragraph: a buffer stops forced selling and panic in a crash, but it does not raise the safe withdrawal rate. Estrada's 2019 study across 21 countries found annually rebalanced stock-and-bill mixes beat a two-year bucket, and in US data five years of withdrawals held in bills raised the failure rate at a 4% withdrawal from under 10% to over 25%. The sequence page's unsourced claim of a double-digit improvement was removed.

2026-10-18. Insurance pages. The whole-life premium multiple is removed from Term Life (was 10 to 20 times term) and Whole Life vs Term (5 to 15 times and 10 to 15 times), because none traced to a primary source; both now give the NAIC's example of $1,800 a year for whole life against $250 for renewable term, for $100,000 of coverage at age 35. Financial Q&A now says term life at 10 to 12 times income (was 10 to 15). A $1 million umbrella policy is about $150 to $300 a year on Disability Insurance (was $200 to $400), and Financial Q&A gives that industry estimate and Mercury's $300 to $600 separately (was one $150 to $600 range). Mid-Career and the insurance hub now say you are about 1.8 times as likely to become disabled as to die before retirement age, and Disability Insurance gives SSA's 24% against 13% (was roughly 2 times, and 1 in 4 against 1 in 8). Real estate no longer calls flood coverage a homeowners rider: it is a separate policy. Renters Insurance and Disaster Financial Recovery no longer use the first person.

2026-10-18. Asset allocation now has one age rule across Asset Allocation, Index Funds, the Three-Fund Portfolio and Choosing Funds: 110 minus your age in stocks, with 120 minus your age named as the more aggressive variant. The Three-Fund Portfolio gave 120 minus age as the rule, and Choosing Funds set bonds at your age minus 20 (the 120 rule); it now says age minus 10. The Brinson, Hood and Beebower (1986) and Ibbotson and Kaplan (2000) papers are linked. The unsourced key fact about a 5% Bitcoin sleeve now cites Fidelity Digital Assets' October 2024 backtest (June 2020 to May 2024: 13.3% a year against 8.8%, volatility 14.1% against 12.3%), and BlackRock's December 2024 note is linked with its 1 to 2% sizing. Understanding Risk gets its first sources and now says stocks returned about 6.8% a year after inflation from 1928 to 2025 (was about 7%, undated).

2026-10-18. Investing for Beginners said mutual funds are manager-picked and ETFs track indexes. The difference is how they trade: mutual funds at one price after each close, ETFs all day on an exchange, and either can be an index fund. It and Behavioral Finance said more than 90% of large-cap managers trailed the S&P 500 over 10 years; SPIVA's U.S. Year-End 2024 scorecard says 84%, as Index Funds already did, and every page now names the scorecard and period. Investing for Beginners also said mid-cap and small-cap funds did as badly or worse; they did a little better (77% and 82%).

2026-10-18. Qualified Charitable Distributions now gives the 2026 limits throughout: $111,000 per IRA owner ($222,000 for a married couple) and $55,000 for the one-time split-interest gift, from IRS Notice 2025-67. Its takeaways, limits table, FAQ and page description still showed the 2025 figures ($108,000, $216,000 and $54,000) while the answer box showed $111,000. The Power of Attorney page's Do this now link pointed to the purchasing-power calculator; it now points to the estate hub's five-step start list, and the estate hub links the inheritance, widowhood, Bitcoin gift-tax and inheritance-calculator pages.

2026-10-18. Personal Balance Sheet: the human capital of a 25-year-old earning $50,000 a year for 40 years is about $1.16 million at a 3% real discount rate (about $0.99 million at 4%), the rate the Human Capital page uses. The body said $1M+ and the image caption said $2M+, which is the undiscounted total. On Financial Influencer Red Flags, a verify link labelled as an Investor.gov fiduciary page went to the Investor.gov home page; it now goes to FINRA's Regulation Best Interest page.

2026-10-18. Personal Finance: the source for automatic saving was labelled Thaler and Benartzi's "Save More Tomorrow" but linked NBER working paper 7682, which is Madrian and Shea's 2000 study of automatic 401(k) enrollment. The label now names that paper, and Thaler and Benartzi's 2004 Journal of Political Economy paper is linked beside it.

2026-10-18. Wealth vs Riches said most millionaires in Thomas Stanley's research drove used cars, most commonly a Ford F-150 then a Toyota Camry, lived in homes worth under three times their income and bought suits under $400. Chapter One of The Millionaire Next Door says they wore inexpensive suits, drove American-made cars that were mostly not the current model, owned homes worth an average of $320,000 and invested nearly 20% of income; the list now says that, and claims from later chapters that could not be checked were cut. Money Habits, Wealth vs Riches and Room for Error now have sources. Room for Error quoted Morgan Housel with a line that could not be found in his work; it now quotes him from his own essay. Its 4% rule figure now cites the Trinity Study (95% of 30-year periods, 1926 to 1995, 50/50 portfolio), and the 4% Rule page now says 95%, not 96%. Lifestyle Inflation links the 1978 lottery-winners study it describes. Financial Mindset said refusing $110 in a week for $100 today forgoes a 527% annual return; it is 520% without compounding.

2026-10-18. Spending pages. Spending Less said households throw away 30 to 40% of the food they buy; USDA's 30 to 40% is waste across the whole food supply, and the page now says so and adds USDA's estimate that a family of four loses $1,500 a year to uneaten food (so about $125 a month, was $150 to $200). The unsourced 80 to 100% delivery markup and the claim that people underestimate subscriptions by about 2 times are cut; the delivery example now cites the FTC's 2024 Grubhub case. Kids and Money and Cost of Living now both give USDA's cost of raising a child through age 17 as about $317,000 in 2025 dollars ($233,610 in 2015 dollars), where they said about $300,000 and $320,000. Cost of Living now dates its $87,460 median household income to 2025 (Census P60-289).

2026-10-18. Debt consolidation now has one rule on Debt First, Zero to One, Unconventional Savings, Debt Types and the bill negotiation scripts: consolidate, by loan or 0% transfer, only if the interest at the new rate over your payoff term plus any origination or transfer fee costs less than paying the cards on the same schedule, and only if you stop using the cards. The 2026-07-02 position ruled out consolidation loans by type and allowed only 0% transfers; loans now face the same cost test, because a lower-rate loan with a fee and a matching term can cost less (CFPB, FTC). Unconventional Savings had recommended a 10 to 12% loan with no cost test.

2026-10-18. Income Growth, Personal Finance and the budgeting guide said job switchers get 15 to 20% raises; the Atlanta Fed Wage Growth Tracker shows median wage growth of 4.7% for job switchers and 3.4% for stayers in September 2026, and the pages now say that. The unsourced claim that 70% of employers expect you to negotiate is replaced by a 2017 CareerBuilder survey in which 52% of hiring managers said their first offer is typically below what they are willing to pay.

2026-10-18. 2026 Contribution Limits now states the SECURE 2.0 rule that starts in 2026: if your 2025 wages from the employer that sponsors your 401(k), 403(b) or governmental 457(b) were over $150,000, your 2026 catch-up contributions to that plan must be Roth. The page listed the $8,000 and $11,250 catch-ups without it.

2026-10-18. The S-Corp break-even is now the same on every page: about $40,000 to $60,000 of net profit, or $80,000 and up in California because of its $800 minimum franchise tax and 1.5% S-corporation tax. Starting a Business said $40,000 to $50,000, Self-Employed said about $60,000, Real Estate Agent Finance said $80,000 for everyone, and the LLC vs S-Corp page description said about $80,000.

2026-10-18. FIRE Calculator: the withdrawal-rate menu labelled 3.5% as Lean FIRE and 3% as Fat FIRE, which contradicted the FIRE guide, where those names describe spending levels. The options are now labelled by retirement length (4% for 30 years, 3.5% for 40 or more, 3% very cautious), and the three result cards by withdrawal rate. The rates and results are unchanged.

2026-10-18. Behavioral Finance: the first behavior-gap chart showed the S&P 500 at 10% a year against 6% for the average investor, a 4-point gap, while the page's DALBAR 2025 figures for the same 20 years are 10.35% and 9.24%, a 1.11-point gap. The chart now plots those figures. The example of $500 a month from age 25 to 65 said the gap costs about $740,000; with deposits at each year-end it is about $759,000, and the method is now stated.

2026-10-18. Financial Metrics counted only your own 401(k) contributions in the savings rate; it now counts the employer match too, as the Savings Rate page does.

2026-10-18. Analytics removed. The Plausible script, its pageview call and its fallback pixel are gone from every page, along with their entries in the content security policy and the service worker. The site now makes no third-party requests: every file a page loads comes from fiatisfake.org. The privacy, verify and funding pages and the Bitcoin exposure quiz say so, and the privacy and verify pages explain how to check it in the browser. Ten Bitcoin tools that described a live price now describe the saved daily close they use.

2026-10-18. Header Bitcoin price. It now comes from the site’s own data snapshot and shows that close’s date. It used to be a live request from your browser to CoinGecko, Coinbase, CryptoCompare or mempool.space, which sent your IP address to those services. The privacy page is updated.

2026-10-18. Social Security Calculator. The claim at 67 and the claim at 70 now count delayed credits from the full retirement age that matches the reduction at 62 entered (30% means 67, 25% means 66, 27.5% means 66 and 6 months). It used to assume 67 for everyone, so for anyone born before 1960 who entered their own reduction it understated both figures (born 1943 to 1954, $2,000 at full retirement age: $2,160 at 67 and $2,640 at 70, not $2,000 and $2,480).

2026-10-18. Social Security Bridge Calculator. The benefits at 62 and at 70 are now rounded down to the whole dollar, as SSA pays them, instead of to the nearest dollar, which showed $1 too much for some birth years (born 1955, $1,000 at full retirement age: $741 at 62, not $742).

2026-10-18. 72(t) SEPP Calculator. Changing the age now fills in that age's Single Life Table life expectancy. The field used to stay at 36.2, the figure for age 50, whatever age was entered, which understated the RMD-method and amortization payments at older ages (age 55, $400,000 at 4%: $12,658 and $22,521 a year, not $11,050 and $21,102). A rate above 5% now shows the Notice 2022-6 limit: the greater of 5% and 120% of the federal mid-term rate for either of the two months before the first payment.

2026-10-15. Dated figures were restamped from the site's own data series and their primary sources. M2 now reads $23.2 trillion as of July 2026 on the M2 explainer (and in its summary on other pages), the M2 chart page and What Happened to the Dollar; the explainer had $22.44 trillion labelled January 2026, when January's reading was $22.41 trillion, and What Happened to the Dollar's M2 box showed an undated $22.4 trillion, which its text now dates to December 2025. M2's year-over-year growth reads 5.41% (July 2026) on Chasing Yield and Cash Management, where it was near 5.6%. The M2 chart's data file was rebuilt from FRED M2SL, and both M2 pages now take the 2020 to 2022 surge from that series: $15.5 trillion in February 2020 to the March 2022 peak of $21.8 trillion (was $15.4 trillion to $21.7 trillion, with April 2022 called the peak). On the explainer, a 1971 dollar buys about 12 cents as of August 2026, with consumer prices 8.3 times their 1971 level (was 13 cents, from an older 7.7 times ratio). M1 on How Money Works is $19.9 trillion as of July 2026, not $18 trillion. Cash Management dates its 3.5% to 3.75% Fed target range to the April 29, 2026 FOMC decision. Bitcoin network figures now use the 926 EH/s 7-day average to September 24, 2026 and the September 19, 2026 close of $81,262: the cloud-mining worked example (block value, hashprice, odds and contract costs, with the sample rental rate reset by the page's own rule to $39 per PH/s per day), which now calls its expected value at that price barely positive (+$147 to +$3,678 before fees, downtime and rising difficulty) where it had said positive EV needs a higher price; How Bitcoin Mining Works (one solo block per about 14,700 years at 1.2 TH/s, was 15,800 at 1,000 EH/s); Bitcoin Mining & Proof of Work (was 800 to 1,100 EH/s); Home Bitcoin Mining (was 800 EH/s), whose pool-earnings estimate is now $0.05 to $0.08 a day before pool fees (was $0.01 to $0.05); the run-a-node share (10.7%, was 10.6%); the solo-mining calculator's network default (was 700 EH/s), with its $81,262 price default now dated; the Bitaxe review's odds (about 1 in 10,700 per device per year, was 1 in 8,000), expected value (about $95 a year for four units, was $126, roughly two-thirds of their electricity cost, which the review had called comparable) and pool payout (about 80 sats a day per unit, was "a few sats"); and the 51% attack threshold on Can the Government Ban Bitcoin (over 463 EH/s, was ~500+ EH/s). The blockchain page's 2026 hash rate range reads 835 to 1,055 EH/s in 7-day averages through September 24, 2026 (was 700 to 900 EH/s), and its block height reads 967,789 at 03:20 UTC on September 20, 2026 (was about 945,000 in April 2026). The price history page puts the supply left to mine at that block at about 0.91 million BTC (was about 1.1 million). The price history, objections and world-currencies pages no longer present June and July 2026 prices as current; the currencies chart was rebuilt from daily closes through September 19, 2026 and Federal Reserve H.10 exchange rates through September 18, 2026, and its inflation table uses August 2026 readings from each statistics office. The opening line of the objections page's "too late" answer now compares 5% adoption with the Internet in 1999, as the rest of that answer does (was 1997). Calculators: the refinance tool's new-loan default is the Freddie Mac average of 6.95% for the week of September 17, 2026 (was 6.1%), and its existing-loan default is 7.79%, the Freddie Mac average for the week of October 26, 2023, now sourced on the page (was 6.95%, the current average placed in the wrong field), so the default example saves $274 a month and nets $4,870 over a 5-year stay (was $275 and $5,034); the money-market T-bill default is 3.72%, the April 30, 2026 one-month Treasury yield, the same month as the tool's other defaults (was 4.25%); the lump-sum vs DCA S&P 500 series is corrected for 2025 and extended through August 2026; the cost-of-living calculator uses the 2026 flat income tax rates for Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Utah, and its method notes now say so instead of calling every state rate a site estimate; the tax-loss harvesting tool splits the 12% and 35% brackets where the 2026 long-term capital gains rate changes. The Treasury yield data file (data/tools/treasury-yields-cmt) was rebuilt from FRED constant-maturity yields at each listed month-end, now through September 2026; its old rows were off by up to 0.49 percentage points. Its spreadsheet's Methodology no longer calls the 2025 to 2026 curve normal and fully restored, since the 3-month yield was above the 10-year at the March and June 2025 month-ends, and its December 2025 row now reads 10-year back above 3-month (was Normal upward-sloping curve). The retiree income chart uses SSA's $2,071 January 2026 average benefit after the 2.8% COLA (was $1,968), so that retiree's monthly gap is $3,462 against the $6,500 reference and $1,943 against average spending by households 65 and older (was $3,565 and $2,046), and its data file now cites SSA's 2026 COLA fact sheet. The COLA history chart adds the 3.6% COLA for 2027 that SSA announced on October 14, 2026, which moves its median line to 3.0%; the page's 2.9% median now names its window, SSA's COLA years 1975 to 2025.

2026-10-15. The money supply page's chart of M2 and CPI growth, 2000 to 2025, was rebuilt from the series it cites (Federal Reserve M2SL and BLS CPIAUCSL via FRED, December over December): M2 moved in 22 of the 26 years and CPI in 16, by 0.1 to 0.7 points, and 2020 M2 growth now reads 24.5%, not 24.9%, there and on the Why Bitcoin page. The SIPC tooltip now says most customers are protected up to $500,000, including $250,000 for cash, the qualifier sipc.org uses. The Social Security page labels its two retirement-gap examples as two reference households, the SCF median household with a retirement account and the chart's retiree with a $200,000 balance; no figure changed, and the chart's data file no longer calls $200,000 the SCF median.

2026-10-14. Banking and lending accuracy pass, checked against primary sources. No agency rule sets a 43% debt-to-income cap for conventional mortgages: Fannie Mae allows 50% through Desktop Underwriter and 36% of stable monthly income for manual underwriting (up to 45% with its credit score and reserve requirements met), and the CFPB removed the 43% limit from the General QM definition, with compliance mandatory from October 1, 2022. The DTI calculator, glossary, financial Q&A and cost-of-living pages are corrected. How Money Works no longer presents the 10% reserve multiplier as current: reserve requirement ratios have been 0% since March 26, 2020, and banks create deposits when they lend (Bank of England, 2014); "mathematically guaranteed to fail" now reads as fragile without a backstop. Pages that described SIPC like deposit insurance now separate the two: SIPC covers missing assets at a failed member brokerage, up to $500,000 including $250,000 for cash, not market losses.

2026-10-14. Hard-coded figures were checked against the site's own reference files and data series. Solo 401(k): the 2026 combined cap is $72,000 and the employee deferral $24,500; the Starting a Business descriptions, the accounts hub, the Start Here estimate and the glossary tooltip still showed 2025's $70,000 and $23,500. Roth IRA: $7,500 a year is $625 a month; the Start Here quiz, the paycheck allocator on the personal-finance hub and the one-page financial plan example still used 2025's $7,000. The IRMAA chart tooltip now measures the surcharge against the 2026 standard Part B premium of $202.90, not 2025's $185. The glossary's SALT note now states the 2026 cap of $40,400. M2 grew 24.5% in 2020, not 24.6% (December over December, FRED M2SL). Also recomputed: the first-job paycheck's federal tax ($123 per paycheck, not $231), the stablecoin page's Treasury yield (about 3.7%, the 3-month bill in August 2026, not 4.5%), the priced-in-bitcoin example (1.23 BTC), the retiree income gap on the Social Security page ($3,565, matching its chart), the average credit card APR on debit-vs-credit (about 22%, Federal Reserve G.19), the budgeting page's 2020 equivalent ($60,900), the withdrawal-sequencing tax saving ($23,520), the Bitcoin price-history marker, and the Bitcoin DCA chart ($105,878 of growth on $10,400 over the ten years to September 19, 2026).

2026-09-27. The site was reorganized. Every page now shares one menu with six sections (Start Here, Personal Finance, Investing & Retirement, Bitcoin, How Money Works, Tools), the section hubs and the tools finder were rebuilt, and 375 guides and 95 calculators now use one page layout. Each page keeps its sources in one numbered list at the bottom, linked from bracketed markers or verify badges in the text. 22 overlapping pages were merged into the page that covered the topic best, and the DCA backtest was merged into the DCA calculator; every old address redirects to its new home. Four "best of 2026" ranking pages became how-to-choose guides with dated snapshots. The Bitcoin Hole comparison stays on the wallets page with a disclaimer: it earns from affiliate links, and this site has no relationship with it. Pages that are not US-only no longer say they cover "US-specific accounts and tax law"; they now say their account and tax examples are US examples. Every source link was checked. 93 no longer worked: 81 were moved to the document's current address or a labeled archived copy, and 12 with no surviving copy were replaced with current primary sources, which corrected several claims. 46 glossary terms that were defined differently on different pages now have one fact-checked definition everywhere, and the FAQ structured data on 54 pages again matches the questions and answers the page shows. Calculator share links put the reader's inputs in the page address; the site's analytics now count each page without that part of the address, and the privacy page says what a share link sends. 45 calculators were fixed, each retested against independently computed results. The most material: the national debt page said the $800 billion to $1 trillion combination of spending cuts and tax increases "barely stabilizes" debt to GDP, but its own source (Brookings, 2026) puts the cost of holding the ratio at 99% in 2056 at about $707 billion a year under current law, so the combination does more than stabilize it (a current-policy baseline or a delay raises the need); the CBDC page gave 260 million e-CNY wallets "in late 2023", which was the central bank's end-2021 figure (it now reports 230 million app wallets at end-November 2025); the Social Security calculator reported every break-even a month late; the credit card payoff calculator treated a 0% APR as 22%; and the withdrawal sequencer did not take the required minimum distribution from Traditional accounts first.

2026-09-26. Labeled diagrams were added to 142 pages. Each is drawn only from figures the page itself states, is built in HTML so it reads in both themes and on phones, and was checked by two independent reviewers for accuracy and clarity before it was published. Reviewing the diagrams surfaced errors in the pages themselves. Each reported error was confirmed against a primary source, or recomputed, before anything changed; 649 corrections were made across 132 pages and 275 reports were checked and rejected. The most material: the home page gave FY2025 net interest as more than $1 trillion (it was $970 billion); the SEP-IRA page added its Solo 401(k) example to $38,400 instead of $39,400 and called the $72,000 limit an employer-only cap (it covers deferrals and employer money together); the HSA page left out that tax-free reimbursement applies only to expenses incurred after the HSA was opened, and applied the once-a-year rollover limit to direct transfers, which have no limit; the high-yield savings page treated SPAXX income as partly state-exempt in California and New York, where the fund misses the 50% US-obligations test and is fully taxable; the hyperbitcoinization page used about $900 trillion for global wealth (about $520 trillion) and about $15 trillion for gold (about $29 trillion), which changed every price target on the page; the ESPP page called a 15% discount a 35% return (it is 17.6%); the Bitcoin donor-advised fund example taxed a 24%-bracket donor at 23.8% (18.8%); the solo 401(k) prohibited-transaction rule, the wash-sale window, the Germany de minimis (now €1,000), the 2026 FEIE limit ($132,900) and the 2026 QCD limit ($111,000) were corrected. Decorative motion was also removed sitewide: sections no longer fade in on scroll, hero text no longer animates in, and headline accent words are solid orange instead of an animated gradient. Stray em dashes and emoji glyphs in page text were replaced.

2026-09-25. Bitcoin vs. MSTR: Strategy figures updated from SEC filings and Strategy's own dashboards. The capital stack left out STRE, the euro-denominated Stream preferred issued November 2025; it ranks between STRC and STRK, so the order is debt, STRF, STRC, STRE, STRK, STRD, then common, and four of the five preferred series are cumulative. "$100 par" was wrong: the legal par value is $0.001 and $100 is the stated amount (EUR 100 for STRE). STRC's rate is 12.00%, up from 11.50% for record dates on or after July 1, 2026, and it has been paid twice a month since July 15, 2026; Strategy has proposed daily record dates, subject to an October 28, 2026 stockholder vote. Holdings read about 846,000 BTC as of September 20, 2026; the count peaked at 847,363 on June 21, so "and growing" and "buys weekly" were removed. The page now records the 6,948 BTC Strategy sold between May 26 and August 9, 2026, whose proceeds paid preferred dividends, refilled the USD Reserve and funded STRC buybacks, instead of saying Strategy may sell. The USD Reserve is $5.04B plus a separate $1.05B of USD Cash (September 20, 2026); a June 29, 2026 policy requires at least 12 months of coverage, and the ~3-year figure is labeled as the page's own estimate. BTC treasury coverage changed from ~55 years to roughly 43 to 47 years. The capital stack shows about $6.75B of debt, including about $40M of secured debt, and about $14.3B of preferred. The wipeout price is about $24,900 before cash and about $17,700 counting the $6.09B of USD Reserve and USD Cash. "Backed by" wording for STRC was replaced because the preferred stock is not collateralized by Strategy's bitcoin. The shared glossary no longer describes STRC as $100 par or as priced off SOFR.

2026-09-25. Twelve page titles had been cut off mid-phrase by an earlier batch edit ("Social Security: When It Runs Out & What", "Where to Bank and How to Structure Your" and ten others). They now read in full in the page title, social-share tags, structured data, search index, related-page cards and next/previous links. Every social-share preview image was regenerated from its page's current title and description; the previous images cut off 299 descriptions and showed outdated titles on some cards, and the financial-abuse page shared the generic site image instead of its own card. Definition tooltips opened near the edge of the screen no longer run off it. Engraved illustrations were added to 143 pages; see how they are made. This page's summary and a line on the Tether page said the author holds Bitcoin plus index funds; the author holds only Bitcoin, as the holdings section above states, and both now say so.

2026-09-25. Charts added to 22 pages, each drawn from a primary source with its spreadsheet available for download: the Fed balance sheet since 2002, the unindexed Social Security tax thresholds, the odds of disability versus death before retirement, Bitcoin's drawdowns from its all-time high, every Social Security COLA since 1975, net interest as a share of federal revenue, the $400 emergency-expense measure, 2026 marginal versus effective tax rates, network hashrate, household spending shares, sequence-of-returns risk, U.S. prices since 1800, business survival by age, the EITC schedule, credit card rates versus the fed funds rate, RMD percentages by age, rolling four-year Bitcoin returns, the real Treasury bill yield, nursing-home prices versus overall inflation, Bitcoin versus S&P 500 volatility, net worth by age, and short- versus long-term tax on a Bitcoin gain. Where a page's own figures disagreed with the charted data, the text now follows the data: a young insured worker is about 1.8 times as likely to become disabled as to die before retirement age (SSA Actuarial Note 2026.6), not 3 times, on /insurance/, /insurance/disability/ and /life-stages/mid-career/; the average credit card rate is about 22% (Federal Reserve G.19, May 2026), not 24%, on five pages; the median Social Security COLA since 1975 is 2.9% (mean 3.7%); net interest took about 18.5% of federal revenue in FY2025; network hashrate is about 1,000 EH/s, and the 2021 China-ban drop was fully recovered by December 2021; Bitcoin's annualized volatility by year and its comparison with stocks and gold were recomputed from daily prices; Fed balance-sheet totals and the QE1 dates were corrected; the 35-to-44 median net worth is $135,600.

2026-09-24. Full-site fact-check: every page and calculator was read by two outside language models, and each of their 2,102 flags was confirmed or rejected against a primary source before anything changed. 811 errors were corrected across 336 pages; about half of the flags were rejected as pedantic, as stale pre-2026 figures, or as attempts to soften the site's argument. Figures now at 2026 values: head-of-household tax brackets ($17,700 / $67,450 / $105,700 / $201,750 / $256,200 / $640,600, Rev. Proc. 2025-32) in the paycheck optimizer, the Roth conversion calculator and the shared assumptions file, where the section 199A threshold is now $201,750 / $403,500; the additional standard deduction ($2,050 unmarried, $1,650 married); HSA limits ($4,400 / $8,750) and the health FSA limit ($3,400) in the paycheck optimizer and elsewhere; the Roth conversion calculator's standard deductions ($16,100 / $32,200 / $24,150); qualified transit and parking ($340 a month); the 2026 federal poverty guidelines ($15,960 for one person, $33,000 for four); the annual-additions cap ($72,000); and the SALT cap ($40,400, phasing down above $505,000 of MAGI). Rules: a self-employed SEP or Solo 401(k) employer contribution is 20% of net earnings after half of self-employment tax, not 25%; people born in 1960 or later start RMDs at 75; a marriage opens a 30-day window for employer health plans and 60 days for Marketplace plans, not 90; Medicare IRMAA tier 6 begins at exactly $500,000. History: the United States did not suspend gold convertibility in World War I; Greenspan's 1966 essay came two decades before he became Fed chair. Calculators: the withdrawal sequencer uses the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table instead of the age-73 divisor at every age; the retirement calculator no longer compounds one extra year; the retirement-on-track gap no longer counts current contributions twice; the 72(t) calculator uses the current Single Life Table (36.2 at age 50) and a true annuitization factor; the money-market comparison identifies FDLXX, not FZFXX, as the fully state-exempt fund; the deductible-coverage target is the highest deductible, not the sum; the paycheck optimizer caps Social Security tax at the $184,500 wage base. Arithmetic was corrected in about 110 worked examples. Eighteen calculator logic problems that need more than a correction are logged for rework.

2026-09-19. Library correction pass after a 100-topic audit: 61 topics repaired across about 130 pages, each change cited to a primary source in a "Sources for these corrections" block on the page. Figures: 2026 HSA limits ($4,400 self-only / $8,750 family), the 2026 0% long-term capital gains thresholds ($49,450 single / $98,900 married filing jointly; one page still showed $96,700), the dependent-care FSA limit ($7,500, or $3,750 married filing separately, from 2026; two pages still showed $5,000), 2026 SIMPLE IRA deferral and catch-up amounts, and the 2026 marketplace out-of-pocket maximum. Rules: the age 60 to 63 catch-up replaces the regular catch-up rather than stacking on it; the pro-rata rule aggregates IRAs, not 401(k) balances; there is no universal 60-day rollover deadline after leaving a job; FBTC holds its bitcoin with Fidelity Digital Assets as fund custodian, which is not investor self-custody; Roth SEP contributions are allowed where the provider offers them. Economics pages: the textbook money-multiplier account was replaced with how bank lending creates deposits; the 90% debt-to-GDP growth threshold claim was removed; federal net interest is stated as about $970 billion, not "past $1 trillion"; the 1974 "petrodollar deal" is described as what the record supports. Two charts were rebuilt. Wages versus asset prices on /wealth-gap/ mixed inflation-adjusted wages with nominal home prices and hand-rounded stock figures; it now uses five FRED series (AHETPI, MSPUS, SPASTT01USA661N, BOGMBASE, all deflated by CPIAUCSL) indexed to 1971 = 100, which puts real hourly wages up about 9%, the real median home price up 2.1 times, real share prices up 4.5 times before dividends and the real monetary base up 8.4 times through 2025. Debt to GDP on /national-debt/ cited the wrong FRED series ID (the gross-debt series) for data that was debt held by the public throughout; the citation now points to OMB Historical Table 7.1, and the projection uses the CBO February 2026 baseline (101% in FY2026, 108% in FY2030, 120% in FY2036). Calculators: the refinance tool now compares payments and remaining principal at the same horizon; the paycheck allocator no longer invents gross pay or double-counts an employer match; the order-of-operations tool starts from essential bills; the RMD calculator labels the 1959 birth-year start age as a proposed-rule assumption. New page: financial abuse: safety, money and confidential help. The duplicate priority guide at /order-of-operations/ was merged into the canonical order of operations with a permanent redirect, and the section on where Bitcoin fits in the order was restored there. Data snapshots were refreshed through the site's own pipeline: Bitcoin $81,262 (2026-09-19), CPI +3.35% year over year through August 2026, M2 +5.41%, total federal debt $40.0 trillion (2026-09-17), 30-year mortgage 6.95%. The old claim in each page header that "every factual claim on this page is cited" was an overstatement and now reads "Follow the source links and check their dates, definitions and scope."

2026-07-29. Cross-page figure alignment batch: stale 2024/2025 constants presented as 2026 values, corrected sitewide against primary sources. Lifetime estate/gift exemption: seven pages and the inheritance calculator said $13.99M (the 2025 amount) or defaulted to $13.61M (2024); all now carry the OBBBA-permanent $15M single / $30M married for 2026, and stale TCJA-sunset framing was removed. Retirement limits: three pages presented 2025 limits as 2026 ($23,500 401(k) / $7,000 IRA; correct 2026: $24,500 / $7,500); the accounts hub's catch-up column said +$7,500 on three 401(k)-type rows (correct: $8,000) and +$1,000 for IRA (correct: $1,100); two pages called the 401(k) catch-up $8,600, which is the IRA age-50 total, and one more page carried the $1,000 IRA figure. First IRMAA threshold: three pages said $106,000/$212,000 for 2026; the 2026 values are $109,000 single / $218,000 married filing jointly. 2026 Medicare Part B standard premium: ~$174/month (the 2024 premium) corrected to $202.90. The contribution-limits page's standard-deduction “what changed” rows double-counted the retroactive OBBBA boost ($15,000/$30,000 baseline with +$1,100/+$2,200 deltas); the correct post-OBBBA 2025 baseline is $15,750/$31,500 with +$350/+$700. Separately, hand-set Bitcoin and macro figures that had drifted from the site's own data snapshots are now stamped from them at every build: /objections/ presented ~$100K as the current BTC price and $108K as the all-time high (snapshot: $64,653 as of 2026-07-19; actual ATH $124,824, October 2025), and its 10x-upside arithmetic was recomputed to match its own base figures (roughly 30x at a 10% share of the $400T market); the Bitaxe review's expected-value math now derives from the stamped price instead of a hand-set $77K; the M2 level (“approximately $21 trillion”) was corrected and stamped on two pages; the hand-typed national-debt level and as-of date on two flagship pages now stamp from the Treasury snapshot; the debasement dashboard's summary paragraph now stamps from the same data files its table reads, so the two can no longer disagree; and the next-halving estimate was corrected from ~March to ~April 2028, projected from the chain tip. Hand-authored FAQ schema on two pages contained 17 questions that did not appear in the visible page text; schema on those pages is now generated from visible text only. Forty-six pages' social-share preview images returned 404; they have been generated and share previews now resolve sitewide. In the same sweep, the money-supply tier figures were re-verified: M0 was stated as approximately $5.8 trillion and M1 as approximately $18 trillion “as of early 2026” on two pages and in the tier chart's data; the May 2026 figures are about $5.5 trillion (M0) and $19.8 trillion (M1), now corrected in prose, chart data, and accessibility labels, with the M2 chart label's 2020 growth figure aligned to the corrected 24.6% series.

2026-07-29. Calculator correctness batch: five tools corrected against primary sources, each with new regression tests. Tax estimator, four fixes: (1) capital losses now follow Schedule D netting with the IRC §1211 limit, offsetting at most $3,000 of ordinary income ($1,500 married filing separately) with the carryforward shown; previously short-term losses offset ordinary income without limit (a $75,000 W-2 with a $50,000 short-term loss understated federal tax by roughly $6,100) and long-term losses offset nothing. (2) The SALT deduction was still capped at $10,000; the 2026 OBBBA rule now applies: $40,400 cap phasing down by 30% of AGI above $505,000 to a $10,000 floor, half each for married filing separately. (3) The child tax credit rose from $2,000 purely nonrefundable to the 2026 $2,200 with up to $1,700 per child refundable (15% of earned income over $2,500, Rev. Proc. 2025-32); a head-of-household filer with two children and $28,000 of wages now correctly gets up to $3,400 refunded instead of $0. (4) Four head-of-household bracket thresholds and the HOH long-term-gains 15% ceiling were corrected to Rev. Proc. 2025-32 ($17,700 / $67,450 / $201,750 / $256,200; ceiling $579,600). Inflation calculator: the hand-set official-CPI series claimed about 52% cumulative inflation since 2000; BLS CPI-U shows about 87%. The series and the category rows are now generated from the site's BLS data snapshot at every build (Housing 62 → 114.7, Food 55 → 86.6, Energy 40 → 124.2 cumulative since 2000, among others). The error understated debasement. Student-loan IDR tool: total interest assumed every payment plan retires the loan, showing $0 interest for low-income borrowers whose payments are entirely interest; the tool now simulates the schedule month by month and reports interest paid, payoff or forgiveness date, and the forgiven balance (a $50,000 loan at 6.5% with $30,000 AGI: $12,120 paid over 20 years, all of it interest, with about $102,880 forgiven). Its poverty-guideline constants were updated from 2024 figures to the published January 2026 HHS guidelines. RMD calculator: ages above 100 were clamped to the age-100 divisor, understating the RMD by up to about 28% at age 105; the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table now runs through 120+ per Pub. 590-B. Best-state-to-sell page: the South Carolina example claimed gains are taxed at up to 6.5%; with SC's 44% long-term gain exclusion (S.C. Code §12-6-1150) and the H. 4216 rate cut to 5.21% for 2026, the effective top rate on long-term gains is about 2.9%, overstated roughly 2.2x before. The same page addressed the reader as if they lived in the site owner's state; that phrasing was removed.

2026-07-29. The Command Center desktop app's state tax estimates were defective; downloads were pulled and the app has been replaced. Adversarial stress-testing of the desktop app (v1.0.0–v1.2) found that its state-level tax layer applied state rates to gross income rather than state taxable income, overstating estimated liability in most states and by roughly ninefold in the worst cases tested (Colorado and Arizona). All desktop app downloads were removed from /command-center/ on 2026-07-22; this entry, which should have been logged that day, closes the gap. The app is retired rather than patched. A successor whose calculation engine contains no tax model at all (assumption-driven questions stay with the site's clearly-labelled educational calculators) is being finalized and will release on /command-center/ with published SHA-256 hashes. If you downloaded the old app, do not rely on its state-level tax output. The Excel workbook remains offline pending its own re-verification pass.

2026-07-23. The 2026 federal tax brackets page showed outdated married-filing-jointly thresholds. The MFJ table on /2026-tax-brackets/ still carried pre-publication projections (22% bracket ending near $215,000, 24% near $411,000, 32% near $521,000, 35% near $782,000) after the IRS finalized the 2026 figures in Rev. Proc. 2025-32. The correct thresholds are $211,400, $403,550, $512,450, and $768,700, overstated by up to roughly $13,300 per bracket edge. The single-filer table on the same page, the tax-bracket calculator, and every other tool were correct throughout; the calculator's banner also wrongly still called its (correct) figures "projections" and now cites the final Rev. Proc. The page now carries the published figures with the approximation hedge removed.

2026-07-08. Bitcoin price arrays in the backtest tools are now generated, not hand-kept. The DCA calculator, lump-sum-vs-DCA, and Bitcoin-vs-S&P-500 tools carried hand-maintained BTC close arrays that needed manual quarterly updates; all three are now stamped at every build from the site’s nightly CoinMetrics snapshot (data/btc.json), so they extend automatically as data arrives. This also normalized older approximate values to exact month-end closes: the Bitcoin-vs-S&P tool’s BTC series had come from a different source (for example, its December 2024 close read $93,429 versus the canonical $93,390), and the DCA calculator’s pre-2025 quarter prices were round approximations that did not always sit on the quarter boundary its interpolation assumes. The clearest case was 2017, where the December peak (~$14,000) was used as the price from late September onward, overpricing autumn 2017 purchases (the correct September 2017 close is $4,335). Backtest results for pre-2025 start years shift accordingly and are now more accurate. The shared quarterly market-history dataset behind the Bitcoin price-history page gets the same treatment: its BTC quarter-end closes are re-stamped from the snapshot at every build (its December 2024 value had also read $93,429). The S&P total-return series has no pipeline source and remains hand-maintained; the Bitcoin-vs-S&P page now discloses that it holds flat past its last point.

2026-07-08. Stale national-debt level corrected. Five pages (the national-debt explainer, bonds, the dollar milkshake theory, financial repression, and The Problem hub) stated the U.S. national debt as "$36 trillion" as if it were the current level; the Treasury’s Debt to the Penny figure was $39.46 trillion as of 2026-06-30. The current level is now stamped from the site’s nightly Treasury snapshot at every build, floored to one decimal so "over" and "+" phrasings stay true, and the national-debt page’s derived figure for interest cost per percentage point of rate increase now scales with it (was "roughly $360 billion," now tied to the stamped level). The dated claim that the debt exceeded $36 trillion in 2024 is unchanged, since it is historical and remains accurate.

2026-07-08. Data-drift cleanup: numbers the site displays are now stamped from the data files it already refreshes nightly. The live national-debt ticker was accruing at a hardcoded ~$2 trillion/yr while the Treasury’s actual trailing pace was ~$3.85 trillion/yr, so the ticker understated debt growth by roughly half; the rate is now stamped at every build from the site’s Treasury Debt-to-the-Penny snapshot. The M2-vs-CPI chart on the money-supply tracker ran on hand-set annual arrays ending in 2025; its data is now generated at build time from the FRED snapshot and extends through the latest month, which also corrected the 2020 M2 expansion from 24.9% to 24.6% (December over December). Mortgage-rate defaults on four tools (mortgage vs rent, refi break-even, DTI calculator, NPV decision) were hand-set between 6.5% and 7.2% and now stamp the latest Freddie Mac 30-year weekly average. The inflation defaults on the real-return and inflation-breakeven tools now stamp the latest CPI year-over-year print; the opportunity-cost and retirement-on-track tools keep deliberate long-run assumptions, with the reasoning now documented on each page.

2026-07-07. Citation and fact-check pass over an audit backlog; every figure below was re-verified against a primary source. UK page: the full New State Pension rate was updated from £221.20 (2024–25) to £241.30 (2026–27), the SIPP annual-allowance and CGT annual-exempt-amount year labels were corrected to 2026–27 (values unchanged at £60,000 and £3,000), and a gov.uk Junior ISA source was added. /bitcoin-in-401k/: the March 2022 Department of Labor “exercise extreme care” crypto guidance was presented as current; it was rescinded in full on May 28, 2025 (EBSA Compliance Assistance Release 2025-01), so the page now says so and notes the DOL’s return to a neutral stance. The rollover section gained the IRS caveats it had omitted (20% mandatory withholding on indirect rollovers, the 60-day deadline, the one-per-12-months IRA limit), plus a sources block. /canada/: the OAS recovery-tax threshold was updated from $90,997 (2024) to $93,454 (2025), and the RESP/CESG claim gained a CRA verify badge. /bitcoin-economics/monetary-premium/: an impossible line (“$8K per ounce of its $3K-plus price”) was removed and gold’s industrial share was corrected from 12% to about 7% (326 of 4,975 tonnes in 2024) per the World Gold Council, with the jewelry-as-savings framing flagged as the site’s interpretation. /changelog/ gained a sources block for its 2026 statutory figures (all re-verified against IRS Notice 2025-67, Rev. Proc. 2025-32 and 2025-19, the SSA 2026 fact sheet, and Public Law 119-21). The El Salvador remittance (24% of GDP) and Turkish-lira (over 80% versus the dollar, 2019–2024) figures gained World Bank verify badges. /bitcoin-vs-altcoins/ lost a shipped “(replace per coin)” placeholder in its source list. The debasement dashboard dropped an unverifiable “fastest peacetime expansion on record” superlative (the FRED-verified ~41% M2 growth stays), credited CoinMetrics for the Bitcoin price in its intro, and scoped an “any four-year window” claim. /case-studies/ relabeled its modeled outcomes as modeled and named the price dataset behind the DCA case.

2026-07-05. Privacy wording made precise, and four pages added. The homepage, the Start Here quiz, the tools index, and /how-this-site-makes-money/ said “no tracking” or “no trackers,” which is not literally true while the site loads Plausible, a privacy-respecting analytics script. Those lines now say “no cookies” (Plausible sets none and collects no personal data), and /how-this-site-makes-money/ names Plausible outright; full detail remains on /privacy/. Four pages were also added to serve situations the site handled thinly: a “where to start” hub that routes the site by life situation, a single-parent order-of-operations page, an “outside the US” scope page, and a financial safety-net page covering SNAP, Medicaid and ACA subsidies, LIHEAP, free tax filing, and 211. Program and tax claims are cited to primary government sources.

2026-07-04. Removed a credibility claim that was not always true. The build was stamping “Reviewed against primary sources cited at the bottom of this page” onto every dated content page, including narrative and utility pages (such as the reading paths and the /start-here/ quiz) that carry no citations. That line now appears only on pages that cite primary sources (an inline verify badge or a sources block), and its wording was made location-accurate. The automatic reading-time estimate was also fixed: it had been counting inline CSS and JavaScript as prose, so the interactive quiz page displayed “READ 48 min” for what is a roughly five-minute quiz.

2026-07-04. Fact-check corrections to the new pages (a primary-source verification pass over 214 numeric claims). Corrected figures: the dependent-care FSA limit to the 2026 amount of $7,500 ($3,750 if married filing separately), raised from a long-frozen $5,000 by the 2025 tax law; the FDIC 2023 unbanked rate to 4.2% (was “roughly 5%”); the federal bankruptcy homestead exemption to $31,575 for cases filed April 2025–March 2028 (was $27,900); the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank uninsured-deposit share to roughly 88% (was ~94%); and the Chainalysis illicit-crypto share to 0.34% for 2023 (was 0.14%). Separately, eight dead or renamed citation links (CFPB, IRS, FINRA, and the NY Attorney General) were repointed to their live pages, three figures were re-sourced to the document that states them, and the CFPB’s 2024 Buy-Now-Pay-Later interpretive rule was reframed to note its 2025 rescission.

2026-07-04. About page + 29 new pages. The /about/ funding section was corrected to state plainly that the site takes no advertising, affiliate, or sponsor money and is funded by voluntary Bitcoin donations only, resolving a contradiction with the site's stated no-affiliate policy. Twenty-nine new education pages and an RMD calculator were published to fill gaps found in a usefulness audit: everyday topics such as unclaimed property, the W-4, Buy Now Pay Later, the Earned Income Tax Credit, renters insurance, RMDs, FSA vs HSA, quarterly estimated taxes, bankruptcy, and debt-collector (FDCPA) rights, plus Bitcoin-skeptic questions on quantum computing, Tether, and criminal use. Statutory figures are cited to primary sources (IRS, CFPB, SSA, FTC, FDIC) and dated to their tax year; the FSA/HSA page uses 2026 limits ($3,400 FSA salary reduction, $680 carryover, $4,400/$8,750 HSA).

2026-07-03. Credit card updates: the card-comparison tool's fee-card recommendation is now labelled as the site author's personal three-card stack (Fidelity Visa, Chase Freedom Unlimited, Chase Sapphire Preferred), not a computed "optimum," with a disclaimer to that effect. Chase Sapphire Preferred details across the tool and /credit-card-strategy/ were updated for the card's June 15, 2026 refresh: it now earns 3x on gas and EV charging (new), 2x on general travel (5x through Chase Travel), and carries a $100 annual hotel credit (doubled from $50) that offsets the unchanged $95 fee. The interactive site map at /map/ was retired; its links now redirect to the /sitemap/ index.

2026-07-02. Calculator and content accuracy batch (UX audit follow-up): Bitcoin price history page rewritten to reflect the actual 2025–26 cycle (ATH $124,824 on 2025-10-06, current ~52% drawdown). The previous copy described a "$95,000 consolidation" that no longer existed. Debt payoff calculator's invest-instead scenario now models identical monthly outflow across scenarios (it previously overstated investing vs. paying off high-APR debt). Pension vs. lump sum tool's required-return solver was inverted and materially overstated the return needed. Social Security calculator's assumed-return input is now used in the calculation. Roughly a dozen tools had stale hardcoded Bitcoin prices ($70k–$100k) replaced with the site's data snapshot, stamped at every build. The consolidation guidance on /debt-first/ and /zero-to-one/ was reconciled to one position. Full detail in the site's audit reports.

2026-07-02. Privacy page: corrected the hosting provider (the site is served from Namecheap shared hosting on a LiteSpeed server, not Vercel) and now discloses the Plausible analytics script explicitly; previous wording claimed no analytics beacon fires, which contradicted the third-party requests section on the same page.

2026-07-02. Market-history dataset (powers the DCA and what-if tools): replaced unverified 2025–2026 quarterly BTC closes and the current reference price with CoinMetrics data. The old reference price overstated BTC by roughly 50%; tool results computed on it were too favorable. Reference prices are now stamped from the site's own data snapshots on every build.

2026-06-02. Disclosures page: added dated correction log section. Added /how-this-site-makes-money/ as a trust-triangle page with full cross-linking.

2026-06-01. Site-wide: homepage page count verified as 422 (dynamic from pages.config.js). Human-readable /sitemap/ page count was stale at 179; will be updated when /sitemap/ becomes data-driven from site-graph.json.