Financial Tools
Tools we build, and tools we use.
Some of what we use, we built ourselves — usually because a question came up in the portfolio that no existing calculator or app answered properly. These range from straightforward modeling tools to more specialized calculators built around problems specific to our own holdings. Happy to share, if you find a use for them.
Built In House
Our own tools.
Roth Conversion vs. Traditional IRA iravsroth.com
A multigenerational model of converting a traditional IRA to a Roth. It runs both paths year by year through the owner’s life and on into the beneficiaries’ inherited-IRA drawdown, so the answer is what heirs actually keep after tax rather than the balance on paper.
BIP-39 Offline Toolbox bip39toolbox.com
Generate, verify and recover Bitcoin seed phrases: checksum calculation, error detection, missing-word recovery, and conversion between entropy and mnemonic. Built to run as a single local file with the network off — by design it refuses to run from a website.
UdoUdid — Household Task System todo.1918capital.com
Shared tasks for the household and the people who help run it. Exactly one person is accountable for each task, work is filed by property and entity, and visibility is set per person — so an accountant sees only what they should. Unlike the others here this one is invite only: it holds live family detail, so there is nothing to try out.
After-Tax Strategy Comparison on this page
Our backtesting research and development. A rebalanced pair of sector funds measured against an S&P 500 total-return proxy, net of the capital gains tax paid at every rebalance and on the final sale, with the tax rate as an input you control.
Strategy Comparison
After-tax strategy comparison.
Our own backtesting research, published rather than kept internal. A 50/50 pair of sector funds, rebalanced once a year on the purchase anniversary so that every sale qualifies for long-term treatment, measured net of capital gains tax against an S&P 500 total-return proxy. Change the rate to match your own situation.
This is a hypothetical, backtested comparison for illustrative purposes only. It does not represent actual investment results, does not account for trading costs, bid-ask spreads, state taxes, or individual tax circumstances, and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Past performance does not indicate future results. NCH / 1918 Capital is not providing investment, tax, or legal advice.
Outside Sources
Data, rates, filings, and rules.
The tools we did not build. All links are to public, primary sources. They open in a new tab, and none of them are affiliate arrangements.
FRED — Federal Reserve Economic Data fred.stlouisfed.org
The single most useful public economic database: rates, inflation, employment, credit spreads, housing, and several hundred thousand other series, all charted and downloadable.
Daily Treasury Yield Curve home.treasury.gov
The official par yield curve, published each business day. The reference point for discounting anything and for judging what cash is actually costing you.
SEC EDGAR Full-Text Search sec.gov
Every filing by every public company, searchable by phrase. Primary sources are almost always faster than commentary about them.
Federal Reserve H.15 — Selected Interest Rates federalreserve.gov
Benchmark rates across maturities and instruments, released daily and weekly.
Consumer Price Index bls.gov
The Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation release, with the detail tables that show which components are actually moving.
IRS Topic 409 — Capital Gains and Losses irs.gov
The authoritative statement of holding periods, long- and short-term rates, and loss limitations. Worth reading before trusting any calculator, including ours.
IRS Topic 559 — Net Investment Income Tax irs.gov
The 3.8% surtax that turns a 20% federal long-term rate into the 23.8% figure our comparison tool uses by default.
Compound Interest Calculator investor.gov
A plain, government-run compounding calculator with no product attached to it.
TreasuryDirect treasurydirect.gov
Buy Treasury bills, notes, bonds, and savings bonds directly, without an intermediary taking a spread.
FINRA BrokerCheck brokercheck.finra.org
Registration, employment history, and disclosure events for brokers and advisers. Check anyone before you engage them — including us.
SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure adviserinfo.sec.gov
Form ADV filings for registered investment advisers: services, fees, conflicts, and disciplinary history.
A note on calculators
Every backtest, ours included, is a description of one path history happened to take. It tells you what a rule would have produced given a specific start date and a specific set of assumptions, and nothing at all about what it will produce next. Treat the output as a way of thinking about a trade-off, not as a forecast.