CreditCostGuide
How We Research Financial Costs and Product Pricing
See the research framework behind CreditCostGuide content, including source review, pricing comparisons, and update practices.
Methodology
How CreditCostGuide researches financial costs
This page documents the editorial process behind every guide and calculator. The goal is reproducibility: a reader who follows our citations should be able to land on the same primary data we used and see exactly where any numeric claim originated.
Sourcing Hierarchy
Public-data sources, in order of precedence
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — primary source for consumer protection rules, complaint data, and regulated-product disclosure standards. Used for credit cards, mortgages, debt collection, overdraft practices, and student-loan servicing.
- Federal Reserve (Board and FRED) — primary source for interest-rate context (effective federal funds rate, prime rate), the Survey of Consumer Finances, and the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. Series IDs are cited inline where used.
- FDIC — bank-rate tables (national rate caps, weekly average APYs), deposit data, insurance limits. Used for checking, savings, MMA, and CD comparisons.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) and household expenditure data. Used for real-rate context and affordability framing.
- Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — investment-product disclosures and registered offerings, where they intersect with consumer borrowing decisions.
- Industry data (Experian, FICO, NerdWallet rate trackers, LendingTree surveys) — cited explicitly when used and treated as supplemental, never as substitutes for the regulators above.
Update Cycle
Review and update frequency
Every guide receives a full editorial review at least every 90 days. Pages with rate-sensitive numbers are revisited when the source publishes new data:
- Federal Reserve series (effective federal funds rate, mortgage rate averages) — checked monthly.
- FDIC national rates — checked when FDIC publishes the weekly update relevant to a deposit-product page.
- BLS CPI — referenced on inflation-context pages monthly when the new release lands.
- Regulatory changes (CFPB rulemakings, Fed policy actions) — applied within five business days of publication when material to a page.
The "Last reviewed" date in each page's editor byline is the date of the most recent verification pass, not the original publication date.
AI Disclosure
AI-assisted drafting and human review
This guide was created with AI-assisted drafting and human editorial review by Javi Pérez. Figures, examples, and explanations are checked against public sources including CFPB, the Federal Reserve, FDIC, BLS, FTC, and SEC where applicable. Content is reviewed quarterly.
What that means concretely: long-form sections are drafted with large-language-model assistance, then edited by Javi Pérez. Specific numeric claims — interest rates, fee ranges, regulatory limits — are checked against the primary source linked in the page’s Sources block before publishing. AI is not used to invent statistics, attribute quotes to people, or describe personal experiences the editor does not have. Calculators use closed-form mathematical formulas (amortization, balance simulation) and do not depend on AI at runtime.
Javi Pérez is not a licensed financial advisor, CPA, CFP, loan officer, tax professional, or attorney. This content is educational only and does not replace advice from a qualified professional.
Calculators
Calculator methodology
All calculators on the site use standard, publicly documented formulas:
- Loan payment — fixed-rate amortization formula
P · r / (1 − (1+r)−n), where r is the periodic rate and n the number of periods. - Credit card payoff — month-by-month simulation: monthly interest = balance × (APR / 12); balance reduces by (payment − interest + new charges) each month until paid.
- Mortgage — same amortization formula plus a monthly add-on for property tax, homeowners insurance, and PMI.
- Debt payoff — compares months and total interest at the minimum payment versus a planned payment, both via month-by-month simulation.
- Credit utilization — total balances ÷ total limits, plus per-card utilization for context.
The implementation lives in main.js on the public site and uses no external libraries. Readers can verify the math against any public amortization reference.
Corrections
Correction and feedback policy
If you spot an error — a stale rate, a misquoted statistic, an outdated regulation — email [email protected] with the page URL and the paragraph in question. Verified corrections are applied within five business days. We update the page's dateModified field and the editor byline so readers can see the change history at a glance.
We do not silently rewrite published numbers. When a number changes for a real-world reason (e.g., a Fed rate change), the page reflects the new value and the dateModified bumps; when a number changes because it was wrong, the correction is noted in the editor byline note for that update cycle.
Independence
Editorial independence disclosure
CreditCostGuide earns revenue from display advertising (Google AdSense) and from a limited set of affiliate partnerships (currently SmartCredit via CJ Affiliate). Affiliate links are marked rel="nofollow sponsored", opened in a new tab, and disclosed on every page where they appear. We do not allow advertisers or affiliates to influence the recommendations, ordering, or editorial language inside our pillar guides. If a partnership ever conflicts with editorial neutrality, the partnership is dropped, not the editorial position.
The site is not a registered investment adviser. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any specific financial product. Readers should consult a licensed professional before acting on educational material.
FAQ
Common questions
What primary sources does CreditCostGuide use?
CFPB for consumer protections and complaint data, the Federal Reserve for rates and consumer surveys, FDIC for bank rate tables, BLS for inflation context, and SEC for investment-related disclosures. Industry reports are cited when used and never substituted for primary public data.
How often is content updated?
Pages are reviewed at least quarterly. Pages with rate-sensitive numbers (mortgage averages, credit card APR averages, savings APYs) are reviewed when the underlying data sources publish updates — usually monthly for Fed series and quarterly for FDIC.
What is the correction policy?
Email [email protected] with the URL, the specific paragraph, and the issue. Verified corrections are applied within five business days, the editor byline is updated, and the page's dateModified field is refreshed.
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