About Thresholds
A reference desk for the numbers that decide things: the limit you may not cross, the cliff you fall off, the date after which money is gone.
What this is
Thresholds is six free calculators and the reference pages behind them, for the parts of US personal finance that turn on a published number: Series I savings bonds, health savings accounts, federal estimated taxes, flexible spending accounts, the Social Security retirement earnings test, and the choice between COBRA and a Marketplace plan after losing job-based coverage.
Each of the six began life as a stand-alone site in 2026. They now live together because the questions overlap: the same income figure moves the earnings test and the premium-tax-credit cliff; a spouse’s FSA decides your HSA eligibility; redeeming a bond can create an estimated-tax payment. One site can draw those lines next to each other.
How it is kept true
Every figure on the site is a row in a registry with the value, the unit, the period it applies to, the primary source and the day a person last opened that source and saw the number. Pages render figures from the registry, never from memory. The build fails if a figure is used past its end date, if a superseded value appears as current, or if a projection is stated as a fact. The full description is on the methodology page.
What it is not
It is information, not advice. Nothing here is tax, legal, financial, investment or insurance advice, and using it does not create a professional relationship. The site is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, TreasuryDirect, the Department of Labor, CMS, HealthCare.gov, or any insurer, employer or plan administrator. Confirm figures with the issuing agency or your plan documents before acting.
Privacy
The calculators run entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, logged or stored on a server. Links you copy contain only the numbers you entered, in the part of the address after #, which browsers do not send to any server. Details are on the privacy page.
Funding
The site is free. It may carry clearly labelled advertising or affiliate links in future; if it does, the disclosure page will say exactly where and how, and no figure or verdict will ever depend on it.
Corrections
If a figure is wrong, it will be corrected and the correction logged on the methodology page with the date and how long the error stood.