Affiliate Disclosure

Last updated: September 24, 2026

The short version

Some pages on TrueCostCalc are built to carry affiliate links — a link to someone else's financial product, where we may earn a commission if you click through and then open an account or apply. As of the date at the top of this page, none of those links points at a live offer. They are placeholders, the buttons say so where they appear, and nothing here is paying us today. When a real affiliate link goes live, this page and the sentence beside that link change in the same release.

When links do go live, the price and the terms you are offered will not change because of it: the commission comes from the advertiser, not from you, and it is not added to what you pay.

Why we use them

The calculators are free, there are no ads served on this site, and we do not sell your data or your traffic. Affiliate commissions are how we intend this site to pay for itself. That is the whole arrangement, and we'd rather say it plainly than bury it — including plainly that it isn't paying yet.

What an affiliate link is

A normal hyperlink with a tracking identifier attached, so the advertiser knows the visit came from us. When you click one, you leave TrueCostCalc and go to that company's own site. From that moment you are dealing with them, under their privacy policy and their terms — including any cookies they set. Review those before you apply.

Where you will see one

When an affiliate link goes live it will sit on a calculator result page or in a guide article, next to the specific product or offer it refers to — never inside a calculator's inputs, and never mixed into its numbers. The disclosure on this page is the site-wide one; the sentence beside an individual link is the page-level one, and neither is allowed to ship without the other. Every outbound affiliate link we publish also carries a rel="sponsored" marker, so no search engine is misled about what it is.

What commission does not buy

No advertiser pays for placement inside a calculator, and no payment changes how a number is computed. Every tool here evaluates the inputs you give it using published formulas — rate, term, balance — and the same math runs whether or not a paid link ever sits near the result. We are not a lead desk that shows you whoever pays most.

How we choose what to link

Four commitments, in plain terms. They apply to every affiliate link we publish, now and later:

Which networks

Our publisher account with CJ (Commission Junction) is active. The advertiser programs we are approved to promote from will be listed here as each one goes live, and additional affiliate networks may be added over time.

Endorsement, carefully stated

A link means we thought the product was worth explaining to someone doing this calculation. It does not mean it is the right product for you, and it is not advice — we are not a lender, broker, or licensed financial advisor. Compare rates and fees on the terms you are actually offered, in writing, before you commit to anything.

Why this page exists

U.S. advertising rules (the FTC's Endorsement Guides, 16 CFR Part 255) require a material connection between an endorser and an advertiser to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. This page is our side of that. It exists before the links do on purpose: the honest order is to say how we intend to be paid, then take the money — not take it and then go looking for a place to mention it.

Questions

Write to support@truecostcalc.com — including to tell us when an affiliate link is broken, misleading, or points at an offer we should stop recommending. Related: our privacy policy and terms.