Open most personal finance sites and you'll find one of two things: a recycled listicle with no real numbers behind it, or an affiliate page whose real job is getting you to click a credit card link. Tally set out to be neither.
Every article on this site works through the actual arithmetic — real percentages, real payoff timelines, real interest calculations — rather than repeating advice that sounds right but doesn't survive contact with a calculator. The tools on this site use the same formulas a spreadsheet would, just without the spreadsheet.
How we approach it
The goal is always the same: show the math, then explain what it means in plain language. When an article says a 1% fee costs you hundreds of thousands of dollars, there's a worked example behind that claim — a starting balance, a contribution, a rate, and a time horizon you can check yourself. We'd rather give you one number you understand than ten tips you'll forget.
We also try to be honest about nuance. "Save 3–6 months of expenses" or "always pay off the highest-interest debt first" are fine starting points, but the right answer usually depends on your income stability, your risk, and your goals. Where a rule of thumb breaks down, we say so.
Who it's for
Tally is for people who want to make a specific money decision — how big an emergency fund to build, whether to buy or lease, how much house they can actually afford — and want to see the reasoning, not just a verdict. No finance background required; if you can do arithmetic on a phone, you can follow every article here.
Who writes Tally, and how
Articles are written and reviewed by the Tally team — a small group that cares more about the arithmetic being right than about sounding clever. Every piece follows the same standard: if we make a claim about money, there's a worked calculation behind it that you could reproduce yourself. When we're summarizing a rule of thumb rather than a hard number, we say so, and we point out where it stops applying.
How we keep the numbers right
The tools and examples here run on standard, checkable formulas — the same ones a bank or a spreadsheet uses: compound-interest and annuity math for savings and investment projections, amortization for debt payoff, and published lending guidelines such as the 28/36 rule for home affordability. We state the assumptions inside each calculator — the rate, the term, the contributions — so a result is never a black box you have to trust. You can reproduce any figure on this site by hand.
Because the entire point of Tally is real math, we treat accuracy as the product: figures are recomputed rather than repeated from memory, and every article gets a second pass before and after it goes live. Mistakes still happen. When one gets past us, we'd rather hear about it than have it sit there quietly wrong — tell us on the contact page and we'll fix it and note the update.
The fine print
Tally isn't run by a licensed financial advisor, and nothing here should be taken as individualized financial advice — it's general education, meant to help you understand the math so you can make your own decisions, or bring better questions to a professional.
The site is small and independently run. It earns a small amount through display advertising, which keeps the calculators and articles free and without a paywall. We don't run affiliate links pushing you toward products, and advertising never shapes what the articles say. Questions or corrections are always welcome on the contact page.