DigestYourFinances
How we work

Data & methodology

Last reviewed

Our data pages are built by a pipeline, not typed in by hand. Each night it requests the latest figures from the sources below, checks them against what we already hold, and rebuilds the affected pages. A page records the date of the figure it shows, and its “updated” date moves only when a figure actually changes.

Live rates and prices

Live figures reach us through APIVerve, a data service run by the same company, which collects them from the original publishers listed here.

FigureSourceHow often it changes
Treasury bill, note and bond rates U.S. Department of the Treasury Every business day
I bond rate TreasuryDirect Each May and November
30- and 15-year mortgage rates Freddie Mac PMMS Weekly, Thursdays
Federal funds rate Federal Reserve After each FOMC meeting
Stock and bond market holidays NYSE and SIFMA When the exchanges publish a new year
Gold, silver and crypto prices APIVerve market data Every few minutes while markets trade

Studies

StudyPrimary sourceReuse
401(k), IRA and HSA Contribution Limits Internal Revenue Service CC BY-NC 4.0
Federal Income Tax Brackets Internal Revenue Service, Rev. Proc. 2025-32 CC BY-NC 4.0
Federal Poverty Guidelines U.S. Department of Health and Human Services CC BY-NC 4.0
Historical Mortgage Rates Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey® Credit the source
Living on Minimum Wage by State U.S. Department of Labor; Internal Revenue Service; State departments of revenue CC BY-NC 4.0
Minimum Wage by State U.S. Department of Labor CC BY-NC 4.0
Sales Tax by State State departments of revenue CC BY-NC 4.0
Social Security COLA by Year Social Security Administration CC BY-NC 4.0
Standard Deduction by Year Internal Revenue Service CC BY-NC 4.0
US Federal Funds Rate History Federal Reserve; Bank of England; European Central Bank CC BY-NC 4.0
US GDP by Year World Bank, World Development Indicators CC BY-NC 4.0
US Inflation Rate by Year World Bank, World Development Indicators CC BY-NC 4.0
US Treasury Yield Curve U.S. Department of the Treasury CC BY-NC 4.0
US Unemployment Rate by Year World Bank, World Development Indicators (ILO modeled estimate) CC BY-NC 4.0
Value of a Dollar by Year World Bank, World Development Indicators CC BY-NC 4.0

How figures are checked

  • Fail safe. If a source is down, the last good figure stays up with its original date. A separate monitor alerts us when any dataset stops updating.
  • Revisions. Agencies revise past data, GDP and unemployment especially. When they do, our series follows the revised figures, so a past year may differ slightly from an old news report.
  • Hand-entered rules. Tax brackets, contribution limits, poverty guidelines and market holidays come from the agency’s own published document, linked above, and are entered when it is released.

Calculators

Calculators run entirely in your browser; the numbers you type are not sent to us. They use standard formulas (amortization, compound interest, IRS tax tables) and state their assumptions on the page. They are estimates for planning, not quotes.

Using our data

Unless a study says otherwise, our tables, charts and text are licensed CC BY-NC 4.0: you may reuse them for non-commercial work with a link back to the study. Freddie Mac’s mortgage data is not ours to license; credit Freddie Mac. Every study page shows the exact credit line to use. Found a problem in the data? Tell us.