Editorial policy
Editorial policy
By Mike Mulik · Published · Updated
I design digital products and build free tools. Not a financial advisor, what that means.
DebtPathway publishes two kinds of thing: a calculator, and explanations of the math behind it. This page describes how both are produced and checked.
Who writes it
Everything on this site is written and maintained by one person, Mike Mulik. There is no anonymous content and no outsourced copy. Every guide carries a visible publish date and an updated date, and those dates reflect real content revisions rather than the date the site was last rebuilt.
What this site will and won't cover
It explains mechanics: how interest accrues, how minimum payments are calculated, what the snowball and avalanche methods actually do to your balance. It doesn't tell you what to do with your money, doesn't recommend specific lenders or products, and doesn't cover topics where the honest answer would be a guess. When a question needs a licensed professional, the page says so and points you to one.
That line is deliberate and it doesn't get crossed. The author of this site is not a financial advisor, planner, accountant, credit counsellor, or insolvency trustee, and holds no licence in any of those fields. More on what that means.
How rates are sourced
Default interest rates are drawn from named primary sources, such as the Federal Reserve's G.19 Consumer Credit report, published lender surveys, and Federal Student Aid. Every figure on the average rates page lists the source behind it. A number that has an official source never gets cited to somebody else's blog.
Those rates are presented as editable defaults, not as your rate. They exist so someone who doesn't know their APR, which stands for annual percentage rate, can still get a useful answer. Rates are reviewed quarterly against their original sources, and pages carrying figures that expire show the date they were current as of.
How the calculator is checked
Three things, all of which you can inspect yourself:
- The method is published in full. The method and assumptions page gives the formula the engine uses, the first four months of a worked example, and the final totals, so you can reproduce the arithmetic by hand.
- The math is covered by automated tests that run every time the site is built. They check that a single fixed payment loan finishes within one month of the standard closed-form amortization formula, that what you borrowed plus all interest charged always equals the total paid, and that the avalanche method never comes out more expensive than snowball.
- Published examples are recalculated, not estimated. The worked figures in the guides come from the same engine that runs the calculator, so a reader who types the same numbers in gets the same answer.
Where it isn't there yet: the engine is checked against the closed-form formula and its own test suite, not yet against an independent third-party amortization table. When that cross-check is done, this page will name what it was checked against and when.
Corrections
Mistakes get fixed, and the fix gets a dated note on the page rather than a silent edit. If you spot one, email hello@doublem.ca. A wrong number is worth more than a polite one, so please do send it.
Your data
The calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type into it is sent anywhere or stored, which you can check for yourself by watching your network traffic while you use it, and there's no account to create. The privacy policy covers the ordinary things that do get logged, like server requests.
What this site doesn't do
It doesn't rank, review, or recommend specific lenders, cards, or financial products. This isn't a comparison site. Where a page points you to outside help, such as a Licensed Insolvency Trustee, or LIT, in Canada or an agency accredited by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, or NFCC, in the United States, those are independent bodies with no connection to this site. First consultations with them are normally free.
Who publishes it
DebtPathway is written and published by Mike Mulik, based in Ontario, Canada, under the name doubleM. Questions about anything on this page can go to hello@doublem.ca.