Who makes this
My name is [YOUR NAME — replace before launch]. I build small, single-purpose calculators for decisions where the arithmetic is annoying and everyone offering to help you is paid by the answer.
What I am not
I am not a licensed loan originator, a credit counsellor, a financial adviser, an accountant or an attorney. I hold no credentials in any of those fields and I am not going to imply otherwise.
What I do instead is show the work. Every calculation on this site states the rule it applies, runs on figures you enter from your own statements, and publishes its limitations next to its result. Where a number is a generalisation — a programme's debt-to-income ceiling, a typical origination fee — it says so on the page and lets you change it.
Where the method comes from
The debt-to-income calculation follows standard agency underwriting practice: qualifying ratios computed from gross monthly income against the full housing payment and the minimum monthly obligations reported on your credit. That structure is not proprietary and it is not invented here.
The payoff comparison is straightforward monthly amortisation — interest accrues at one twelfth of the stated APR, payments are applied, the surplus goes to one target debt — run five ways over the same budget. The only judgement calls are how to treat fees, and those are stated openly: origination fees are modelled as financed because that is how personal lenders deduct them, and transfer fees are added to the transferred balance because that is how issuers post them.
The car comparison carries every amount forward to a common horizon at your after-tax savings rate. That is the only way to compare money spent today against money spent monthly, and it is the step most versions of this calculation skip.
What I have deliberately left out
There is no consolidation lender on this site, no balance-transfer card, no debt relief programme, no "check your rate" button and no email capture. Those are the standard business model for this category, and they are the reason the tools that rank today default the origination fee to zero and do not model the balance-transfer cliff.
The corollary is that I have to be honest when the expensive route wins. Sometimes a consolidation offer really is cheaper, and the page says so.
How this is paid for
Display advertising, and nothing else on this page today. I do not sell leads, take referral or affiliate fees from lenders, card issuers, dealers or debt companies, or receive anything based on which way you decide. If that ever changes it will be disclosed on the page it affects, and it will never sit on the decision a calculator advises.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it. That is the whole policy. Contact.