About This Site

What this site does

What It Really Costs traces widely quoted numbers back to their original source and checks whether they hold up.

The questions we keep asking are these:

• Where did this number actually come from?
• When was that source produced, and is it still current?
• If several outlets give different answers, what exactly differs between them?

Why bother

Searching for a number gets you an answer in seconds. The problem is that almost nobody tells you where the answer came from.

When we check, this is what we keep finding:

• The underlying survey behind a universally quoted statistic has not been updated in over a decade
• An agency published figures on two different bases, and the press mixed them
• A rule that was removed years ago is still described as current
• A "billions of dollars lost each year" total was never published by the organization it's credited to — someone multiplied an average

None of this is visible in search results. You have to open the source document.

How we check

The full procedure is on the How We Check Numbers page. In short:

1. We go to the primary source. Not a news write-up — the agency's own report or dataset
2. We show the arithmetic. A reader should be able to reproduce our figure from the same source
3. When we can't confirm something, we say so. We don't fill gaps with plausible-sounding guesses
4. When we get something wrong, we fix it — and note that we did

Tables we calculated ourselves are collected on Numbers We Calculated Ourselves, with sources and methods attached. You're free to use them — we only ask for a link back so readers can check the method.

Who writes this

This is an independently run site. We are not commissioned or sponsored by any organization or company.

Institutions, companies and products discussed here are covered on the basis of publicly available material only. We have no relationship with any of them.

What this site does not do

• We don't give personal advice. For decisions about taxes, insurance, investments or medical care, consult a qualified professional
• We don't invent what isn't in the source. If there's no evidence, we say there's no evidence
• We don't decide the conclusion first. When checking shows the conventional answer was right, we publish that too

Found something wrong?

Please tell us. That is the point of publishing every source and every calculation.

You can reach us through the Contact page.