Robert Pokladow
IT contractor and founder · StraightSum
Robert Pokladow is an IT contractor who builds and maintains StraightSum. He is responsible for the calculators, the site infrastructure, and the verification of published state lending data against primary sources. He is not a licensed financial adviser, and independent financial specialists are contracted periodically to review calculator formulas, state rules, and educational content.
What I am not
I am not a licensed financial adviser, a credit counsellor, or an attorney. I hold no financial certification. Nothing on this site is personalised advice, and where you need advice about your own circumstances the right person is an NFCC-affiliated nonprofit counsellor — whose initial consultation is generally free and who earns nothing from this site.
What I can do is implement the arithmetic correctly, read a statute and cite it, and state plainly when I have not read one yet. On a subject where most sites imply authority they do not have, being specific about the limits seemed more useful than the alternative.
What I actually do here.
The arithmetic
Every calculator on the site derives from a single module implementing the standard amortization formula and an effective-APR solver. The APR solver uses bisection rather than Newton-Raphson, because the present-value function is strictly monotonic in the rate and bisection therefore cannot diverge. That sounds like a detail; it is the reason the figure quoted on the rates page and the figure the calculator produces are the same number rather than two numbers that happen to be close.
State lending data, and its verification status
The state pages cover all 51 U.S. jurisdictions. Each one states whether its figures have been read from the statute and the regulator's own publication, and where they have, it lists the sources with a review date. Current status: 0 of 51 verified. Unverified pages publish no figures at all and carry noindex — they route the reader to the regulator instead of guessing at a rate ceiling.
Infrastructure and privacy
The site is a static export with no application server, no database, and no user accounts. The calculators, the debt tracker, and the paycheck planner run entirely in the browser and store data on the reader's own device. There is no store of visitor records to leak, because there is no store — which is a stronger privacy property than any policy document.
Editorial decisions, including the expensive ones
The site earns referral fees when a reader borrows. It also names credit-union Payday Alternative Loans, biller payment plans, employer wage advances, and nonprofit counselling — none of which pay anything — and places them above the paid option wherever they are genuinely cheaper. That is a deliberate trade of short-term revenue for a page a reader can rely on.
How to check my work.
This is not rhetorical. Every claim on the site is constructed to be checkable by a reader with no special access, and where a claim cannot be checked it is labelled rather than asserted.
Check the arithmetic against a lender's disclosure
Enter their amount, rate, term, and fee into the total cost calculator. If the monthly payment or the total of payments differs by more than a couple of cents from their Truth in Lending disclosure, one of us is wrong and I would like to know which.
Check the state sources
Verified state pages list the statute and the regulator publication the figures were read from. Follow them. Unverified pages publish no figures, which is the honest version of not knowing.
Check the security claims
The security page describes the response headers the site sends. Open your browser's network inspector and read them. If one is missing, that is a bug and worth reporting.
Tell me when I'm wrong
Email info@straightsum.com. Corrections take priority over everything else on the site, and I credit anyone who wants the credit.
My conflict of interest, stated plainly
Our tools and referral service are free to use. Partners pay us for completed forms submitted through /apply-now/. Whether a submission qualifies for payment, and the amount paid, depend on the partner's criteria. A completed form is not a loan approval or a promise of funding. Compensation does not change our calculator results. Nothing is ever charged to a consumer. That is the whole business model, and it means I have a financial interest in you borrowing money.
Partner payment depends on whether a completed form meets the partner's criteria, and the amount can vary. Several of the options recommended most often on this site — credit-union PALs at 28%, biller payment plans, employer wage advances, nonprofit counselling — pay nothing at all, and they still go above the paid option wherever they are cheaper.
StraightSum is an independent publisher and referral service. We are not a lender, a loan broker, a loan servicer, a credit services organization, or a subsidiary, agent, or affiliate of any lender or lead network. Forms hosted on this site by third-party providers are clearly identified as such.
Elsewhere on the site
StraightSum is not a lender, loan broker, or credit services organization. We do not make credit decisions, issue funds, set rates or fees, guarantee approval, or service loan accounts. Calculators and guides on this site are educational estimates, not offers of credit and not financial, legal, tax, or credit advice. Actual terms depend on the lender, your state, verification, underwriting, and applicable law.