For journalists
Quick, sourced ways to check the money numbers in a story, plus free data with a simple credit line. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
The numbers kit
- Inflation calculator: what a dollar amount from any year since 1913 is worth today, using the BLS consumer price index (CPI-U).
- Percentage calculator: percent change, percent of, and the difference between percent and percentage points.
- Mortgage and loan payment calculators with a full amortization schedule you can download as CSV.
- Downloadable data: county property tax, home values and loan limits, and US wage percentiles, with sources and as-of dates.
- Embeddable calculators for an online story, with no tracking.
- Each calculator page states its formula, assumptions and exclusions, and the methodology covers compounding, timing and rounding.
Adjusting for inflation
$100 in 2000 had the buying power of about $186.96 in 2025: prices rose 87% (CPI-U annual averages, BLS series CUUR0000SA0).
Say which year's dollars you use (“in 2025 dollars”), and compare annual averages with annual averages. A monthly index is fine for a recent month, but say so.
Percent vs percentage points
A mortgage rate that goes from 6% to 7% rises by 1 percentage point, which is a 16.7% increase in the rate.
Use “percentage points” for the gap between two percentages, and “percent” for the relative change. “Rates rose 1%” is ambiguous; “rates rose 1 percentage point, to 7%” is not.
Loan math
| Rate | Monthly payment | Total interest |
|---|---|---|
| 6% | $1,798.65 | $347,515 |
| 7% | $1,995.91 | $418,527 |
| Difference | $197.26 | $71,012 |
The payment is M = P × r(1 + r)n ÷ ((1 + r)n − 1), with r the monthly rate (annual ÷ 12) and n the number of payments. It excludes property tax, insurance and PMI, which a “monthly mortgage payment” in a story often includes; say which one you mean.
The rule of 72 and its limits
| Annual rate | Rule of 72 | Exact |
|---|---|---|
| 2% | 36 years | 35 years |
| 8% | 9 years | 9 years |
| 20% | 3.6 years | 3.8 years |
The shortcut is close between about 6% and 10% and drifts at very low or very high rates. It assumes annual compounding and a constant rate.
Data you can download
- County housing costs: property tax, home values and loan limits: every US county, with a CSV, margins of error and methodology. A county-vs-state angle for local stories.
- US wages by percentile and occupation, May 2025 (CSV): where a pay rate sits among US wages.
- More on the data page. Figures are dated to their source release; none is a live feed.
Credit and reuse
Use the numbers and tables freely. Our datasets are under CC BY 4.0, and the government figures in them are public domain. Please credit:
Source: Even Figures (evenfigures.com)
A link is welcome but never required, and no particular link text is expected. Please cite the primary source (Census, BLS, FHFA) alongside us where your style calls for it; each page links its sources.
Contact and corrections
Even Figures is published by Hamza Oucha, an independent publisher. For a calculation, a figure from our data or a check of a number, email contact@evenfigures.com with your deadline.
If you find an error, tell us the page and the inputs; confirmed errors are corrected. The calculators give estimates, not financial advice.