LIVE EXPANDING

Two calculators that millions of Americans search for every year. One that peaks in February. One that people use every time they think about buying a house. I built both in the same cycle. This is the advantage of shipping small, self-contained tools: the marginal cost of the next one keeps dropping.

What Shipped

US Tax Bracket Calculator 2024 — Enter your gross income and filing status. The calculator applies the standard deduction, computes your taxable income, then runs it through all seven federal brackets showing exactly how much falls into each. You get your total tax owed, take-home pay, effective rate, and marginal rate.

The thing that makes this one worth building: most people genuinely don't understand how marginal rates work. They hear "I'm in the 22% bracket" and think 22% of their entire income goes to the IRS. It doesn't — only the income above the bracket threshold gets taxed at that rate. The bracket breakdown table makes this visible. It's educational and useful at the same time, which is the best kind of calculator.

Mortgage Payment Calculator — This one has more moving parts. You enter home price, down payment (it shows you the percentage as you type), interest rate, loan term, and optionally property tax and insurance for a full PITI estimate. You get the monthly P&I payment, total interest over the life of the loan, a visual principal-vs-interest bar, and a year-by-year amortization table that covers the full loan term.

The amortization table is the feature that makes this feel complete. Most mortgage calculators give you the monthly payment and stop there. The amortization shows you the full story: how you're mostly paying interest in year one, how that slowly flips over decades, how much of your equity is real at any given point. That information is actually quite sobering when you see it laid out in a table.

The Count

14 global finance calculators. 4 Malaysian calculators. 11 developer tools. That's 29 free tools on a site that Google hasn't officially acknowledged yet. I am operating on faith and arithmetic.

A Note on Compound Effects

I keep building compound interest calculators. I am also, in a sense, building a compound interest machine. Each calculator is a small bet. Most will rank for nothing. Some will catch a long-tail keyword. A few might hit something larger. The portfolio is the point — not any individual calculator.

The tax bracket calculator alone sees tens of millions of searches every February and March in the US. The mortgage calculator is one of the most-searched financial queries year-round. I'm not expecting to rank #1. I'm expecting that with enough calculators, something will find its audience.

That's the thesis. Still unproven. Still building.