Where the numbers come from.

Every verdict on this site is two numbers: what you pay, from your statement or what you typed, and what you should pay, from a public reference. This page lists the reference for each category, the formula, and the dates. When a number here changes, the change is dated.

Max savings and Saved

Max savings is the sum of every row's yearly gap. It is a ceiling: what you would keep if every row were fixed at the reference price. It is not a promise, and one row can be wrong in either direction. Saved is what you tick off on the Saved page. It counts the amount you type as actually won, per month times twelve, and falls back to the row's estimate if you leave the field as it is.

Utilities

Electric: the bill divided by the kWh on it gives your effective rate. That rate is compared against the residential average for YOUR STATE, not the country, because a national figure is wrong by a wide margin in both directions: 13.1 cents in Nevada against 52.7 in Hawaii, on a national average of 18.34 (EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, residential, June 2026). Your state comes from the zip in your profile. More than 15 percent over your state's average flags the row, and the gap is the difference times your usage over a year. Water, gas and trash are listed as totals; the provider sets the rate.

In states where residential supply is competitive, the regulator publishes its own list of every licensed supplier and its rate, and the row links to it: Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York and Delaware. These are government price lists, not comparison sites that take a commission. Where a state runs no such list, the row falls back to the state average rather than linking somewhere that would pay us.

Housing

Mortgage: the refinance check compares your rate against the 30-year national average (6.71 percent, Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 3 September 2026) and only flags a gap above 0.75 points, because a smaller gap does not clear its own costs. Refinancing is not free, and the row says so: closing costs are estimated at 3 percent of the balance against a published range of 2 to 6 percent, and the row gives the break-even in months rather than a yearly saving on its own, since a saving that takes four years to arrive is only real if you stay four years. Both of these figures were previously biased the same way: the average was stale at 6.25 percent, which inflates the gap, and closing costs sat at 2.5 percent, the very bottom of the range, which shortens the break-even. Corrected together on 8 September 2026.

PMI: this is not a negotiation. Under the Homeowners Protection Act the servicer must cancel private mortgage insurance on written request once the balance reaches 80 percent of the ORIGINAL property value, must drop it automatically at 78 percent, and must drop it at the halfway point of the loan term regardless of value, provided payments are current. Type the original purchase price and the row works out which threshold you have reached and what to do about it.

Rent, HOA and home services show what you pay with the script for the renewal conversation. Rent has no public reference: no dataset gives the rent for your specific unit, so the site does not invent one.

Money

Savings interest: the interest on your statement is divided by the national average savings rate (0.45 percent, FDIC national rate table, checked 2026-09) to estimate a balance, then multiplied by the gap to a typical online high-yield rate (4.0 percent, checked 2026-09). Bank fees: the fee times 12, since a no-fee account makes it zero.

Phone

Your bill is divided by the number of lines in your profile. The reference is the cheapest public list price of a plan whose data allowance is at least 1.25 times what you used last month, from a short list of prepaid and MVNO carriers (Mint Mobile, Visible, US Mobile, Google Fi; list prices checked 2026-09, taxes and fees excluded).

Internet and TV

Broadband and the TV bill were shown inside Phone until 8 September 2026 and are now their own category. They were only ever one card: the parser has always sorted them apart, the reference data has always been separate, and folding the two option lists together produced one list mixing dollars per line with dollars per month. Mobile is judged on the data you use; broadband is judged on what reaches your address. They share a category name and nothing else.

TV: the row used to show what you pay and no verdict at all. It now prices the substitution, because the three cheapest ad-supported streaming tiers are published figures the site already carries. The objection comes first on the row rather than in a footnote: those cheap tiers carry no local channels and almost no live sport, which is usually the entire reason the cable box is still there. If that describes you the number does not apply, and the lever is the retention line and dropping the box rather than the package.

Internet is priced by market for cable and fiber, and those providers publish nothing comparable, so the site does not invent a number for them. Fixed wireless is different: it carries one published national price, so those plans are named and ranked against what you pay (T-Mobile and Verizon list prices, checked 8 September 2026). Whether a plan reaches your address, and whether its speed suits you, is not something the site can know, so that figure is a ceiling and the row says so. Type the download speed off your bill and the row works out what you pay per Mbps; it only quotes the fixed-wireless price as a gap when your speed sits inside what fixed wireless actually delivers, about 100 to 300 Mbps, and above that the plans are not a like-for-like swap, so the row shows your price per Mbps and stops naming a gap. Separately, FCC rules require every provider to post a broadband label giving the price, the fees and the date an intro rate expires, and the FCC national map lists who serves a given address; both are linked on the row. The retention script and the equipment rental line remain the levers if you stay.

Housing, older note

Mortgage: type the rate and remaining balance from your statement. If your rate is at least 0.75 points above the current 30-year average (Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, checked monthly), the row shows the first-year interest difference (balance times the rate gap) and a break-even against closing costs estimated at 2.5 percent of the balance. It is a screen, not a quote. PMI: if you pay it, the yearly amount counts as recoverable once equity passes 20 percent, which the servicer must honor on request. Rent: no reference price; the lever is the renewal negotiation, so the row carries the script. HOA: listed, no lever.

Insurance, older note

The row estimates a loyalty penalty from years with your insurer: 10 percent after 3 years, 18 percent after 6, based on published studies of price optimization in auto and home insurance (Consumer Federation of America, various state reviews). It is an average, not your quote. The fix is to get two outside quotes; the row links to your state insurance department and, where noted, a comparison marketplace.

Cards and loans

A card or loan payment on a bank statement carries no rate and no balance, so these rows stay at zero until you type two numbers off the lender's own statement.

For a card: yearly interest is balance times APR. A 0 percent balance transfer costs about 4 percent of the balance up front and typically buys 12 to 21 months, so the recoverable figure is the first year of interest minus that fee, and it shows as zero when the fee would cost more than the interest. The average APR on accounts assessed interest was 21.52 percent in Q1 2026 (Federal Reserve G.19, via LendingTree). Asking your own issuer for a lower APR costs nothing and is listed first.

The row also checks whether a transfer would actually end the debt. Clearing the balance plus the fee inside the promo months takes a set monthly payment, and your statement already shows what you pay, so the row compares the two and says plainly when the payment does not get there. The first year of savings is still real in that case; what is not real is the assumption that the balance is gone when the rate returns. That is why the free APR ask, which carries no deadline, is named first either way.

For a loan: the gap is balance times the difference between your rate and the credit union average for that kind of loan. Four different products land in this category and they do not share a benchmark. A personal loan is measured against 10.64 percent, the credit union average on a three-year unsecured personal loan (NCUA, 26 December 2025). A car loan is measured against 5.53 percent, the credit union average on a 48-month used car loan from the same table; banks averaged 7.38 percent on that loan (Bankrate, 2 September 2026). Judging a car loan against the personal loan average would report no gap for a driver sitting well above the auto rate, so the two are kept apart. Rates at or below the matching average show no gap. Federal credit unions cap personal loans at 18 percent. Car loan refinancing also depends on the age and mileage of the car and on owing less than it is worth, which the site says on the row rather than assuming.

Buy now pay later plans and cash advance apps are listed but never given a rate comparison. BNPL usually runs at 0 percent, so there is no rate to beat, and a cash advance app charges a subscription and an express fee rather than interest. Running an APR calculation on either would produce a number with nothing behind it.

Where insurance prices come from

Insurance is the one category where nobody publishes a price the way a carrier publishes a phone plan, because the rate is written for you individually. Six regulators close part of that gap by running their own comparison, and the site links the one for your state: California, Florida, Texas, Maryland and New Jersey publish sample premiums by named company, and New York publishes how often each insurer draws upheld complaints. Florida and Texas cover home as well as car; the rest are car only, and the row only offers a tool on a line it actually covers.

Every one of those figures is a SAMPLE for a defined profile, not a quote for you, and the row says so every time it shows one. Florida states it plainly in its own words: the rates are illustrative. Everywhere else, and for every insurer anywhere, the site links the NAIC company lookup, which gives complaint history and licence status free and nationally.

Every link here was loaded before it shipped, which is not ceremony. The Florida address the site carried for several days now redirects to a different domain, and four state URLs guessed from the obvious pattern returned nothing at all. There is no paid insurance link on this site, and the free rate tables stay whether or not that ever changes.

Car insurance

The loyalty penalty is the whole lever, and it works in every state because auto is a genuinely competitive market. Rate estimate from years with your insurer: 10 percent after 3 years, 18 percent after 6, based on published studies of price optimization in auto insurance. It is an average, not your quote. The fix is two outside quotes and a call to your own carrier first.

Home insurance

Requoting moves a home policy far less than it moves a car policy, so this category does not lead with it. Three levers do the work, and the first two apply everywhere: raising the deductible, which is entirely inside your control, and roof age, now the largest single rating factor in most states.

The third is the bundle, and it is the only figure this category puts a number on, because it is the only one the site can see for itself: if your car and home policies are with different carriers, a multi-policy discount is on the table. Carriers publish these in the 5 to 25 percent range and the site uses 12 percent across both premiums, which is a midpoint, not a quote.

Mitigation credits are real in most of the country but go by a different name and a different peril in each region, so they are keyed by state rather than written as one story: wind mitigation on the Gulf and Southeast coast, wildfire hardening in California under Safer from Wildfires, impact resistant roofing against hail in the plains states. Where the site has no entry for your state it says so instead of inventing one. State comes from the first three digits of the zip in your profile and nothing else.

Roof age is optional and stays on your device. Most carriers start pricing around a roof past 15 years, so typing your roof's age tells you whether age is already a lever against you or whether the deductible and any mitigation credit are still the ones doing the work. No dollar figure is attached to roof age, because none is published; it only tells you which lever to pull first.

Health

Premiums first: health and dental have no loyalty penalty and no requote. The lever is open enrollment, and the honest caution is that a cheaper premium with a higher deductible can cost more over a year. The site does not model that; it has no claims history and will not guess at one.

Prescriptions carry a rule no other category has, written into the site's mission document. The site never suggests stopping, skipping, splitting, delaying or changing a medication, and never compares one drug against another. It prices the same medication, prescribed the same way. Every question it asks is answerable at a counter without a clinical judgement: is there a generic, what is the cash price without insurance, can this be filled 90 days at a time. On generics the cash price often beats an insured copay, and a 90 day fill usually costs less per month than three 30 day fills.

A pharmacy charge on its own is a dollar amount and a frequency, which is all the levers above need, so nothing about the drug is required. There is now an optional medication field: fill it and the row points you to the two places that publish a cash price for that exact drug, Cost Plus Drugs and GoodRx. For about thirty of the most common generics the row also shows the Cost Plus price itself, dated, for a 30 day supply plus their shipping, so you have a real number to hold your copay against. That price is the cash price for the same medicine, never a nudge to switch. It is optional, it is never prefilled, and whatever you type stays on your device like everything else, so nothing is stored unless you enter it. A deploy check refuses to ship the price table once it is more than 120 days old, and it is refreshed each quarter. A single drugstore visit is spending, not a prescription, so a pharmacy row only appears once the charge repeats. No savings figure is claimed on these rows, because your own copay is the thing the cash price is measured against and the site cannot see it: it never compares one medication against another and never suggests changing one, it only helps you price the same prescription somewhere cheaper.

Subscriptions

Every recurring charge is listed with what it costs you a year, before you answer anything. You then tap one of three: use it, barely, or forgot I had it. Barely and forgot count the full yearly cost as recoverable; use it counts nothing. The site never guesses usage.

Be clear about what this section is: unlike Phone or Cards there is no public price to compare against, so the total here is your own judgement, not a calculation. We dropped the old "days since used" question because nobody remembers the date, and a 60 day line turned the same habit into two opposite verdicts.

AI

Paid AI seats are summed; the gap assumes 60 percent of that spend has a free path, based on Pivvi's routing data. Your own number depends on what you use them for.

Groceries

There is no published price per store, so this section does not claim a gap on what you spend on food. It shows the total and says so.

The one grocery comparison that needs no price data is the warehouse club tier. Annual fees as published in September 2026: Costco $65 base and $130 Executive, Sam's Club $60 and $120 Plus, BJ's $60 and $120 Club+. The upper tiers pay 2 percent back on purchases at the club, capped at $1,250 at Costco, $750 at Sam's Club and $500 at BJ's. The row compares that cash back against the extra the tier costs, using your own spend at that club from the statement, and it points either way: it will tell you to drop a tier as readily as to add one. Type what you pay if the annual fee falls outside your statement window.

Two more comparisons need no shelf price either, so the tile carries them too, checked 18 September 2026 against each chain's own loyalty program page. The first is which chains ask for a free sign-up (a card or an app), which ask for nothing at all (Aldi, Trader Joe's, Publix, H-E-B and Wegmans run on everyday pricing with no program to join), and which require a paid membership just to shop. The second is which categories are the safest place to swap in the store brand: dairy, canned and frozen staples and baking ingredients are ranked lowest risk because they are processed the same way across brands; over-the-counter medication is its own line because the FDA requires the same active ingredient at the same dose, so the rule is to compare that line, not the brand name; bread, frozen pizza, cereal, soda, coffee and snack chips are ranked as more of a taste call, where the saving is smaller and more personal. Neither list is ranked by price, and both say so where they sit.

Subscriptions, older note

Two levers, and they are alternatives rather than a pair. Cancelling something you stopped opening is the big one, and the row counts the full yearly cost when you say you forgot you had it or barely use it. For a service you do use, the row used to price at zero, which told you nothing; it now checks whether the same service publishes a cheaper tier and prices that instead. The two are never added together, because you cannot both cancel a service and pay less for it.

Only services whose price was read at the source appear here: Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Paramount+, Peacock, Prime Video and YouTube Premium, checked 8 September 2026. Two price-comparison sites were consulted first and disagreed by a dollar or two on every single streaming figure, and the services' own pages showed one of them was simply out of date. Where sources still conflict the price is left out rather than guessed, which is why Amazon Prime, Walmart+, Spotify, Calm and Headspace carry no figure: Prime alone was quoted at both 119 and 139 dollars a year. A missing service costs you nothing. A wrong price costs you the reason to believe the rest of the page.

An ad-supported tier is a downgrade, not a discount, so each row names what you give up and sends you to the plan page for the rest. Whether that trade is worth it is your call; the site only prices it.

How fresh every figure is

Every number on this site comes from a dated public source, and a dated source only stays honest if somebody looks at it again. This table is built from the site's own reference data rather than typed here, so it cannot quietly drift from what the rows actually use. A reference past the cadence of its source says so on the row itself, in amber rather than red: the figure is still sourced and still useful, it is just older than the thing it came from.

Cadence is judged per source rather than on one timer. A weekly rate survey and a federal statute both appear below, and treating them alike would either nag about a law that cannot move or stay quiet about a rate that changed last Thursday. Anything marked as set by statute has no expiry; it changes when the law changes.

Utilities, Gas and EV

Water, gas and trash show totals only. Their rates are set by a single provider with no alternative to switch to, so there is nothing to compare them against and the site says that rather than inventing a reference. Electricity and internet are no longer in this group; both are covered above. Fuel math lives on PumpWatt. Groceries stay here for a specific reason: no public dataset compares one store's shelf prices against another's, and the site will not scrape one into existence, so the only grocery comparison it makes is the warehouse membership tier, which needs no price data at all.

Your month

Three buckets from the statement, averaged per month: Bills (every charge placed in a category, except the card and loan payments under Debt), Money moved (card and loan payments, transfers, cash apps), and Spending (one-time purchases, travel, dining, and anything not placed). Deposits are ignored. Percentages are shares of total outflow. The "after fixes" figure subtracts Max savings divided by twelve from Bills. The 50/30/20 guide (Warren, All Your Worth, 2005) is shown as a reference for income, which a spending statement does not contain; the site never assumes your income.

What the site does not know

• Taxes, fees and promotional pricing on any bill. Reference prices are list prices.
• Whether a charge is recurring when only one month is dropped. Three months gives the best read.
• Your usage. Every category asks the one or two questions it needs in your profile.

Changes