Make money make sense.

What Money Scale is

Money Scale exists for one reason: to take the intimidating parts of personal finance and turn them into a few clear clicks. Drop a salary into the homepage calculator and you'll see exactly where your paycheck goes — federal tax, FICA, state tax, and what's actually left to spend or invest. Open the calculator suite and you'll find 43 free calculators covering savings vs investing, compound interest, debt payoff, mortgages and rent vs buy, retirement accounts, taxes, and more — plus 2 professional calculators (a retirement planner and a Monte Carlo portfolio forecast) that are free too. Alongside the tools are plain-English lessons, long-form guides, and a Financial IQ game.

Who it's for

Money Scale is built for the millions of people who never got a real personal-finance class. If you've ever wondered "is my salary good?", "should I pay off debt or invest?", or "how much should my emergency fund actually be?" — Money Scale is for you. The Simple mode is friendly enough for first- time investors; the Advanced mode is detailed enough for people who want to see every assumption.

How it's funded

Money matters too much to be paywalled: every calculator, lesson, and guide is free, with no account required. Running the site still costs money, so Money Scale is funded three ways: display advertising (Google AdSense ads load only if you accept advertising cookies), optional reader support on Ko-fi, and our newsletter. We don't sell your data.

Email is always optional. If you choose to, you can give us your address to get the newsletter or to download a PDF budget tracker; nothing else on the site asks for it. Every calculation runs in your browser — we never receive the numbers you type into a calculator. The privacy policy has the details.

Who writes and checks the content

The calculators use cited public-data assumptions — federal tax brackets and contribution limits from the IRS, rates from the Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac, and the FDIC, historical inflation from the BLS, and long-run market returns from public index data. Each assumption is linked to its source on the relevant calculator, and every lesson has a Sources section.

Guides carry a named byline. They are produced with AI assistance and then reviewed by our editor, Ethan Ginsberg, who recomputes every number with the same calculator engine the site runs and checks every figure against primary sources before publishing. The full process, including how corrections work, is in our editorial standards. Money Scale began as a Replit build-a-thon project and has kept growing since.

Not financial advice

Money Scale is educational. It doesn't know your income, debts, taxes, or goals, so it can't give you personalized advice — and nothing on the site is investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Talk to a qualified professional before making any real money decision.