Editorial Policy

How calculators and guides on FinCalcHub are researched, reviewed, and kept current. If you ever want to know where a number on this site came from, this page tells you how to find out.

1. Sources

Every quantitative claim on FinCalcHub — tax band, contribution cap, historical return, average house price — links back to a primary source. We prefer the underlying authority over secondary aggregators.

Primary sources we use

• UK: HMRC (income tax, NI, ISA limits, pension allowances), the Bank of England (interest rates, inflation), the Office for National Statistics (ONS) (wage and price data), GOV.UK (state pension, stamp duty).
• USA: IRS (federal tax brackets, retirement contribution limits), the Social Security Administration (FICA, benefits), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (CPI, wage data), the Federal Reserve (FRED for historical data).
• South Africa: SARS (PAYE, rebates, tax tables), the South African Reserve Bank (interest rates, inflation), Statistics South Africa, the GEPF and major retirement-fund administrators.
• Markets: S&P, MSCI, FTSE Russell, Morningstar for index returns; Robert Shiller and Aswath Damodaran's published datasets for long-run historical figures.

Secondary commentary (the Financial Times, Investopedia, MoneySavingExpert, etc.) may be quoted for context but never as the sole source of a quantitative claim.

2. Calculator formulas

Every calculator uses the actual published formula, not a simplified approximation. Where multiple methods exist for the same calculation, we prefer the one used by lenders, accountants, or the relevant regulator. For example:

• UK mortgage repayments use the standard amortising annuity formula with monthly compounding — the same formula UK lenders publish.
• SA PAYE uses the SARS-published tax tables and primary, secondary, and tertiary rebates as applicable to the user's age.
• US 401(k) contributions are calculated against the IRS-published annual limit for the current year.

If a calculator's underlying assumption is meaningful (compounding frequency, real-vs-nominal returns, ages eligible for rebates), it's surfaced as an explicit input or stated in the page text — not hidden.

3. Author and review

All content is written and reviewed by James Blanckenberg (see About). For specialist topics — retirement-fund administration, cross-border tax — we cross-check with publicly available guidance from the relevant regulator before publication, and we'll note where we have personal experience with a system versus where we don't.

FinCalcHub is not a regulated financial-advice service. Articles and calculators are informational. For decisions tailored to your situation, please consult a qualified adviser in your jurisdiction.

4. Update cadence

• Tax year changes: tax tables, NI thresholds, contribution caps, and rebates are reviewed and updated each time HMRC, SARS, or the IRS publishes new figures — typically within two weeks of the official release.
• Quarterly: top-traffic pages are revisited every quarter — statistics refreshed, dates updated, and the body expanded where new information warrants it.
• Ad-hoc: when a reader reports an error or the rules materially change (e.g. UK National Insurance reform, US SECURE Act updates, SA Two-Pot system rollout), corrections go live the same week.

Every page that has been updated carries a visible date stamp. Schema-level dateModified reflects the same date.

5. Corrections

If you find a calculation error, a stale figure, or an explanation that could be clearer, email jamesblanckenberg@gmail.com. We aim to:

• Acknowledge any error within 24 hours of receiving the message.
• Publish a correction within 48 hours for factual errors, longer for substantive rewrites.
• Where the correction materially changes an answer a reader might have acted on, note it visibly on the page rather than silently editing.

6. Editorial independence

FinCalcHub is funded by display advertising (Google AdSense). Advertisers have no input on what we write or how we rank options. We don't run sponsored "best of" lists. If we ever publish content where there is a commercial relationship behind it, it'll be clearly disclosed on the page and on the advertising & affiliate disclosure page.

7. AI use

We don't publish AI-generated content as our own. Writing assistants are sometimes used for drafting, copy-editing, and proofreading, but every published article is reviewed, edited, and (where the topic demands) personally re-verified against the primary source before going live.

Editorial policy last reviewed: 12 May 2026.