# Editorial standards How WealthCompounds writes calculators and guides: formulas, sources, corrections, and the line between advertising, workbooks, and explanation. WealthCompounds is an independent education project. Articles and calculators are written for this site and revised when a figure or a rule of thumb goes stale. The point of a page is to show the math and name the assumption, not to send you to a product. ## How the calculators work Compound interest is credited on the schedule you pick, after that period's contributions. The FIRE number is annual spending divided by a withdrawal rate you choose. The default rate is 4%, which is a research shorthand for a long retirement, not a promise. Years to a target use the future value of a level monthly contribution at a constant return. The savings-rate chart starts from zero, treats the unsaved share of income as spending, and sizes the portfolio at 25 times that spending when the withdrawal rate is 4%. Coast FIRE walks backward from a capitalized retirement portfolio. Social Security and long-running side income reduce that portfolio. Partial withdrawals before retirement raise the amount you need today. Real mode uses a real return and today's dollars. Nominal mode inflates the cash flows and uses the nominal return. Both are labeled. The 401(k) tool applies the employee deferral cap and a simple match: a match rate times the deferral that falls inside a percent-of-pay window. The drawdown tool withdraws an inflation-adjusted amount each month and applies a constant nominal return. It will look calm in a way real retirements are not, because it has no bad decade. ## Sources Contribution limits are the 2026 figures from IRS news release IR-2025-111 (November 13, 2025), Notice 2025-67. Net-worth medians are the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances as published in the Federal Reserve Bulletin in October 2023, in 2022 dollars. Other percentiles on the net-worth page are approximations and are labeled as such. The savings-by-age multiples are Fidelity's published retirement-savings guidelines (about 1× salary by 30, 3× by 40, 6× by 50, and 10× by 67). They are a benchmark with their own assumptions about retirement age and lifestyle, not a grade. The 4% reference is William Bengen's 1994 withdrawal research and the later Trinity study. Those studies used historical U.S. portfolios over fixed horizons. They do not know your fees, taxes, or spending. ## Corrections Limits, medians, and formulas are checked when a page is edited. If a number is wrong, the page should be fixed and the date on legal pages moved when the policy itself changes. This version of the site does not yet publish a corrections inbox. Until it does, the change belongs in the page, not in a promise to reply. ## Independence WealthCompounds does not take payment to feature a broker, a fund, or a credit card. Display ads, if AdSense serves them, are separate from the sentence that explains a formula. The workbooks are our own worksheets. A buy button is a Stripe Payment Link for that PDF. After payment, the file is sent as a private download link, not published on the site. It is not a recommendation to purchase, and the calculator result does not change if you buy one. Nothing here is personalized advice. Tax law, plan documents, and benefits change. The account-order page is a general teaching sequence with the exceptions written on it. HTML: https://wealthcompounds.com/editorial-standards --- Educational only. Not investment, tax, or financial advice. Canonical HTML: https://wealthcompounds.com