About PayoffRoute
PayoffRoute is a collection of free financial calculators focused on one theme: borrowing and getting out of debt. Home equity loans, HELOCs, credit card payoff strategies — the decisions where understanding the real numbers can save you thousands of dollars.
Who runs PayoffRoute
PayoffRoute is an independent project, founded and edited by Evan Marsh. It is not a bank, a broker, or a lead generator, and it takes no commission from any lender — so the calculators here have no reason to nudge you toward borrowing. The job is the opposite: to show the total cost of a decision, including the cases where the honest answer is don’t.
That independence is the whole point. A calculator built by a lender exists to make the loan look affordable; this one exists to tell you what it really costs over its whole life — lifetime interest included, and the risks a monthly-payment figure hides left in plain sight.
I read every message sent through the contact page, and reader questions decide which calculators get built next. If a number here ever looks wrong, tell me — the fastest way to earn trust on money math is to be correctable.
A word about the name
Evan Marsh is a pen name. It is the editorial identity behind this site, not a legal one. The person writing is the site’s sole founder, developer, and author, working independently — with no financial-services employer, no licence, and no client to answer to. I write under a pen name for ordinary privacy reasons, and I would rather say so plainly than let a byline quietly imply something it shouldn’t.
I hold no CFP, no CFA, no CPA, and no licence of any kind, and you will not find one claimed anywhere on this site. That is deliberate, and it is why the site is built the way it is: the reason to trust a number here is not the name signed under it. It is that the formula behind it is published on the methodology page, the assumptions are written down, an automated test suite runs every calculator through the cases where financial models break, and every figure in every article is reproducible in the calculator sitting next to it. If one is wrong, you can prove it — and I will fix it and say what changed.
Don’t trust the name. Check the math. That is the entire proposition, and it is the one thing a lender’s calculator can never offer you.
Our principles
- Free, forever, no signup. Every tool works instantly without an account, an email address, or a paywall.
- Private by design. All calculations run in your browser. The numbers you enter are never stored on or transmitted to any server.
- Total cost, not teaser payments. Every calculator shows lifetime interest and total repayment, because a low monthly payment can hide an expensive loan.
- Show the math. Each tool is accompanied by a plain-English explanation of exactly how the numbers are computed, so you can verify them yourself — and our methodology page publishes the formulas, assumptions, and the primary sources behind them — the Federal Reserve and the CFPB — so you never have to take a figure on faith.
- Verified before release. Every calculator's output is checked against independently computed results, and an automated browser test suite drives all 42 of them through the cases that break financial models — 0% rates, payments below the interest, zero balances, extreme fees, and every mode behind every dropdown. It fails the build if a calculator ever prints a nonsense number instead of admitting it has no answer. Each page also shows when it was last reviewed.
What we are not
We are not a lender, a broker, or a financial advisor. Results are educational estimates based on the numbers you enter; actual loan offers depend on your credit profile and your lender. For decisions involving significant sums, consult a qualified financial professional.
Contact
Found a bug, have a question, or want to suggest a calculator? Visit the contact page — feedback directly shapes which tools get built next.