Editorial policy

Equidwell is an educational site. The calculators and guides are not personal financial advice, a loan offer, or a guess at what a lender will approve. The people who build the site write the formulas and the pages. No licensed loan officer, attorney, or financial planner signs off on them.

Who creates the formulas

Calculator math lives in the site code, separate from the page text. A payment uses the standard amortizing formula: interest is charged on the remaining balance, and the rest of the payment reduces principal. Taxes, insurance, and HOA dues are split into a monthly amount and are not added to the loan. When the loan is above 80% of the price, conventional PMI starts as an editable example of 0.50% of the loan per year. The affordability tool uses a 28% housing guideline and a 36% guideline that also counts other monthly debts.

Those formulas are checked with automated tests for ordinary loans, a zero rate, extra principal, and cases that must not produce a blank or infinite result. A test can catch a math error. It cannot tell you what a lender will approve.

How assumptions are labeled

A starting rate such as 6.75% is an example rate. It is not today’s mortgage rate, and this site does not connect to a live rate feed. Property tax, insurance, PMI, and government-program fees are labeled as assumptions unless the page is quoting a published schedule. You can replace the example numbers with a loan estimate or a local bill.

How sources are selected

Pages cite public sources that support the statement next to them. Consumer explanations point to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. FHA mortgage insurance points to HUD. VA loans point to the Department of Veterans Affairs. USDA loans point to USDA. A citation is not added for a claim the source does not make. When a fee schedule can change, the page says to confirm the current rule.

This site does not publish a page for every state. Property taxes and buyer programs differ by county, and a copied article with the state name swapped would not be a source.

How often pages are reviewed

Calculator pages and guides show “Last reviewed: October 2026.” That date means the assumptions and the page text were checked in that month. It is not a claim that a government fee schedule was re-verified on a particular day after that label.

How corrections are handled

Send a correction to hello@equidwell.com with the page address and the figure you think is wrong. If the figure comes from a formula, the formula and its test are updated together. If it comes from a cited schedule, the citation is checked before the sentence changes.

Advertising, when it is enabled, sits outside the calculator controls. A paid placement is not an editorial endorsement.