What's new at Terra.

Added an interactive Mortgage Points Break-Even Calculator that compares actual zero-point and points-based fixed-rate quotes, shows monthly payment savings, models break-even using cumulative P&I plus the remaining payoff balance, tests the user's expected selling/refinancing horizon, and supports My Terra plus browser-local result downloads. Added browser-based Read Aloud controls to Knowledge Library articles with Play, Pause/Resume, Stop, speed options, listening-time estimate, progress and paragraph highlighting. Existing protected financial engines are unchanged.

Added two source-backed Terra Decision Guides: a CD guide comparing bank and brokered CDs with Treasuries, bonds, bond funds, money-market funds and savings; and a neutral gold guide covering diversification, inflation and crisis claims, physical gold vs. exchange-traded products and miners, IRA rules, taxes and costs. Added related internal links. Also added a reusable Terra Dataset License page and the missing license property to the 1% Fee Study Dataset structured data in response to Google Search Console. No calculator formulas or protected financial engines changed.

Added two primary-source-backed Terra Decision Guides: a 2026 Medicare IRMAA guide covering income tiers, the two-year lookback, Roth conversions, capital gains and SSA-44 life-changing-event relief; and an NUA guide explaining the special employer-stock tax rule to review before an IRA rollover. Added cross-links from Roth/Traditional, 401(k) fund evaluation and the Retirement Income Planner. Search and sitemap discovery were refreshed. No calculator formulas or protected financial engines changed.

Removed the duplicate Start Here action at the top of the homepage by turning the hero CTA into “Find your starting point,” which jumps to the audience sorter. The homepage 401(k) tile now opens the Employer Match Calculator, the tax-impact tile uses plainer wording, and all nine focused calculators now include a compact “What this does / Have ready” strip before the form. No calculator formulas or protected financial engines changed.

Added a three-path “Start in the right place” section directly below the homepage hero so visitors can self-select before encountering deeper content: Start Here for people who are not sure where to begin, Financial Calculators for people with a specific question, and Money Now for people trying to understand current financial developments. The cards use Terra’s existing homepage visual language and stack into large tap targets on mobile. No calculator formulas or protected financial engines changed.

Improved the Advisor True-Cost call-to-action contrast, made the Credit Card Payoff Planner’s primary action visibly scroll to the generated plan with guided next-step jumps, and re-surfaced direct homepage links to the 401(k) Funds vs. SPY research and 1% Fee Study. Financial calculation engines remained unchanged.

Moved the desktop “Better information. Better decisions.” box farther right and anchored it to the right edge of the hero on large PC screens so it remains clear of the hiker. On narrower laptop/tablet widths the decorative box stays hidden. No calculator, Money Now, search, sitemap, or financial logic changed.

Moved the desktop hero thought box to the open right-side scenery so it no longer covers the hiker, aligned the homepage HTML/Open Graph/Twitter titles, corrected a FINRA municipal-bond reference label, and added reusable time-stamped Current Context blocks to Money Now explainers so changing figures stay separate from the durable decision framework. Protected financial engines and calculator formulas are unchanged.

Redesigned the homepage around Start Here, current decision-oriented explainers, calculator discovery and topic-based learning. Added the Money Now hub and three source-backed launch explainers on Treasury yields, retiring with a mortgage and 401(k) contribution limits.

Retargeted branded retirement, advisor-fee, tax-drag and 401(k) research pages with clearer search-intent titles and H1s while preserving Terra product names as context. Added a dedicated Editorial Team page and linked substantive bylines/structured-data author entities to it. Retired an unfinished future-product placeholder and configured its legacy URLs to return 410 Gone. Added an internal SEO target map to reduce future keyword cannibalization. Protected financial engines and formulas are unchanged.

Added a Terra Research hub and a reproducible 1% Fee Study across five starting portfolio sizes and three time horizons, with downloadable Excel/CSV data, Dataset/Article structured data, citation guidance and explicit separation of cost from service value. Renamed the main navigation research entry from 401(k) Research to Research, strengthened research methodology, removed the last visible unfinished future-product reference from the beginner course/homepage copy, and improved Editorial Standards link contrast on dark page heroes. Protected financial engines and calculator formulas are unchanged.

Added an original, primary-source-backed Terra Decision Guide that compares the high-yield early-1980s bond environment, the ultra-low-yield 2020 era and today’s starting yields; explains inflation and duration; separates what changed from the jobs bonds can still perform; and connects the guide to Terra’s existing bond foundation and individual-bonds-vs.-funds content. Also increased contrast for the Money & Investing Basics editorial-team/review line. Protected financial engines and formulas are unchanged.

Focused indexed discovery on current, substantive Terra content; noindexed utility/placeholder pages; removed an unfinished future-product preview from homepage/Learn discovery; added the printable My Money System course-completion worksheet; strengthened the parent/educator course path; expanded the inherited-assets guide; and added missing related-content handoffs. Calculator formulas were not changed.

Added a new source-backed Terra Decision Guide comparing individual bonds with bond mutual funds and ETFs across maturity control, diversification, interest-rate risk, cash-flow matching, bond ladders, costs, convenience and target-maturity ETF exceptions. The existing beginner Bonds guide now links directly to the comparison. Desktop header navigation labels are centered for a more balanced visual layout. Search terminology was expanded for individual bonds, bond funds and bond ETFs. Protected financial engines and formulas are unchanged.

Added a site-wide Search entry plus a prominent search box on Learn. Terra searches calculators, guides, course modules, retirement tools and research locally in the browser and shows the strongest matching sections/snippets for each relevant page. Search phrases are kept out of the URL and are not sent to a third-party search provider. Protected financial engines and formulas are unchanged.

Added browser-local exports to Terra’s generated calculator and decision-tool results. Users can download an Excel workbook containing current inputs, key result summaries and any generated tables, plus download chart images as PNG files (or a ZIP when a tool contains multiple charts). Nothing is sent to an export service; the files are created in the browser. Protected financial engines and formulas are unchanged.

Added a long-form Knowledge Library guide that starts with a simple IOU and builds through bond types, coupon vs. yield, primary and secondary trading, Treasury auctions, the yield curve, credit spreads, mortgages, credit cards, portfolio roles, bond funds, ladders and risks. The most confusing concept — why bond prices and yields generally move in opposite directions — now has a compact visual callout with a three-price example and a clear distinction between current yield and yield to maturity. The guide is grounded in SEC/Investor.gov, TreasuryDirect, FINRA, Federal Reserve, New York Fed and CFPB sources. Protected calculator engines are unchanged.

Responded to AdSense's “Low value content” finding by strengthening original educational depth and trust signals rather than adding filler. Added Editorial Standards, five original Terra Decision Guides, deeper real-world examples across all 10 Money & Investing Basics modules, clearer authorship/review signals and primary-source grounding. Protected calculator engines and the established effective-annual math convention remained unchanged.

Added a free 10-module plain-English course for high-school-age learners, young adults and any first-time investor. The course connects money habits, compounding, saving vs. investing, stocks/bonds/funds/ETFs/indexes, risk and diversification, credit-card debt, retirement and brokerage account types, fees/taxes, online scams and a first repeatable money system. A separate parent/mentor guide provides conversation prompts and a hypothetical $500 exercise. Course progress stays browser-local; no account is required and quiz answers are not stored. Existing financial engines are unchanged.

Strengthened Terra's neutral decision-support positioning without redesigning the site or changing financial math. The homepage now carries the promise “See the math. Understand the tradeoff. Decide for yourself.”, the trust strip explicitly distinguishes education from a product pitch, calculator pages show a small Terra-approach cue, and a new How Terra Makes Money page explains advertising/affiliate guardrails and the commitment that revenue does not change calculator formulas or modeled results. All protected financial engines are unchanged.

Standardized public URLs around HTTPS non-www canonicals with permanent redirects for www, HTTP and explicit index.html variants. Optional calculator tables now use more compact desktop widths, the Credit Card Payoff Schedule no longer stretches three columns across the full page, and opened calculator charts use a more readable maximum width while responsive/mobile scrolling is preserved where wider multi-column data requires it. Financial formulas and protected engines are unchanged.

Improved the nine-card calculator hub so each tool reads as a distinct choice instead of blending into the page background. The hub now uses a softly tinted section background, stronger card borders and subtle shadows, restrained Terra-green top accents, category pills, and keyboard/hover emphasis. Calculator content, formulas and protected financial engines are unchanged.

Kept the verified Roth/Traditional calculation engine unchanged while making the tax-timing logic easier to understand. The calculator now explains Traditional as “tax break now, tax generally due later” and Roth as “tax now, qualified withdrawals can be tax-free later,” highlights the current-versus-retirement marginal-tax break-even, clarifies consistent federal/state tax assumptions, and links to a new plain-English Knowledge Library guide covering retirement income, RMDs, tax diversification, max-contribution considerations and survivor-tax flexibility.

Added four quick calculators that deepen Terra without turning the site into a generic calculator farm: Inflation & Purchasing Power, Savings Goal, Roth vs. Traditional, and Social Security Claiming Comparison. The new tools use visible assumptions, browser-local My Terra save/load, optional graphs and tables, and direct handoffs into Terra's deeper investment or retirement tools. The Roth page uses an equal pre-tax saving-budget convention, while the Social Security page relies on the visitor's own SSA estimates rather than recreating SSA's earnings-history formula.

Added a new debt calculator for up to five credit cards. Visitors can see the modeled interest cost and payoff time, test extra monthly payments, compare debt avalanche and debt snowball using the same monthly budget, and work backward from 1-, 2-, 3- or 5-year debt-free targets. The model assumes no new purchases and uses APR ÷ 12 as a transparent monthly interest approximation; actual issuer statements may differ because interest methods and minimum-payment formulas vary.

Extended Terra's dollar-sign and thousands-separator formatting from the Retirement Income Planner to every true currency input across the site. Large values now display like $250,000 or $1,000,000 when idle, switch to plain digits while being edited, and continue passing raw numeric values into the existing calculators. Ages, percentages, rates and other non-currency inputs are unchanged. No financial formulas changed.

Added optional Layer 4 to the Retirement Income & Cash Flow Planner. Visitors can compare the Tax/RMD no-conversion baseline with a fixed annual Roth-conversion target or a fill-a-selected-federal-bracket rule, see federal-tax and RMD timelines, trace conversions year by year, and compare the three existing withdrawal orders with Roth conversions turned off. RMDs are taken before same-year conversions, conversion tax is funded through the modeled cash-flow/portfolio process, and Terra explicitly avoids labeling any strategy “optimal.” Layers 1–3 and the established calculator engines remain unchanged.

Moved the retirement planning path near the top so visitors can see the optional Tax/RMD and Survivor layers without scrolling to the end. Added a post-results handoff into Tax/RMD, clearer taxable-interest guidance, and a separate state/local & other tax allowance in Layer 2. The advanced layer now ignores the base planner tax allowance, eliminating the possibility of silently double-counting a base tax estimate on top of Terra's modeled federal tax. The verified base retirement cash-flow engine remains unchanged.

Kept the standard Email Terra mailto link, added a browser-level Copy Email Address fallback, and explained that mailto requires a configured email application or browser handler. Contact now also highlights the About/Trust section in primary navigation. No calculator or retirement-model logic changed.

Kept the validated Retirement Income & Cash Flow Planner as a simple first layer, then added optional Tax & RMD Intelligence and Survivor Planning that open only when a visitor chooses to go deeper. Added a Contact page and site-wide Contact footer link using contact@terrainvestortools.com. Roth-conversion strategy remains a clearly labeled future layer. The verified base retirement cash-flow engine and existing Terra calculator formulas are unchanged.

Aligned multi-column retirement-planner inputs, made the Build My Retirement Cash Flow button provide unmistakable visual confirmation, and added explicit spouse/partner recalculation messaging. Partner income now states the first modeled age at which it affects cash flow, so a later-starting Social Security stream is not mistaken for a failed recalculation. The retirement cash-flow engine and all existing Terra calculator formulas are unchanged.

Added Terra's deeper retirement-planning tool: pensions, Social Security estimates, traditional and Roth retirement accounts, taxable assets, other recurring income, spending, inflation and user-selected return/cost assumptions now flow into a year-by-year retirement cash-flow projection. The tool keeps tax buckets separate, supports an optional spouse/partner income stream, saves to My Terra, and clearly labels taxes, RMDs, survivor benefits and sequence risk as future layers rather than pretending to calculate them today.

Added the authorized Google AdSense publisher record at the site root so /ads.txt is served publicly and can be verified by AdSense. Future public deployment packages now include this file instead of assuming it already exists on the host. No calculator, analytics, article, navigation, CSS or JavaScript logic changed.

Expanded Why Terra with a first-person, anonymous founder story based on more than 20 years as a self-directed stock and options investor and a longtime entrepreneurial background. Added clearer sections on how Terra research is created, what Terra is and is not, and how the site tries to earn trust. Removed the speculative “How it may make money” block. No calculator, analytics or navigation logic changed.

Added a restrained “Was this page helpful?” prompt to selected Learn guides, calculators and reality-check tools. GA4 now measures helpful/not-helpful votes, intentional calculator updates, Start Here completions, My Terra saves and article-to-tool handoffs without sending calculator values, questionnaire answers or free-text feedback. The Privacy page was updated accordingly.

Cleaned Article structured data across the Learn library: added representative article images, full timezone-aware publication timestamps, consistent author/publisher metadata, and removed an unnecessary free-content property that caused Google’s Rich Results Test to label public articles under “Paywalled Content.” Calculator formulas and site layout are unchanged.

Three new plain-English, source-backed guides: expense ratios, evaluating 401(k) funds, and the 4% retirement rule. Calculator-to-article handoffs were expanded, and the homepage 25-year fee illustration now ships the correct $173,304 fallback in the raw HTML before JavaScript runs.

Added the first in-depth, primary-source-backed guide: “What Do Advisor Fees Really Cost?” It connects directly to Advisor True-Cost, Investment Fee and Costs & Taxes, and establishes Terra's reusable article format with a short answer, worked example, Terra Takeaway, questions to ask, limitations and references.

Restored the hidden formula labels on Costs & Taxes, corrected Tax Drag hero contrast, strengthened Start Here styling on legacy tool/research navigation, and added a direct New Money link to the inherited-assets guide. Full internal-link, anchor, metadata and JavaScript QA passed.

The site header now uses the selected Terra globe-and-leaf identity with “Down to Earth. Smarter Investing.” on desktop, with a compact version on smaller screens. The My Terra save-scenario promotion was also moved from the top of Costs & Taxes to the My Terra dashboard, where the feature belongs.

Hardened the six-question Terra Path so its action button reliably enables after a valid answer, restyled the Start Here header reassurance chips for the green hero, and removed two placeholder links from a planned-product preview. Financial formulas were not changed.

Start Here now begins with a six-question educational journey finder that routes visitors to three relevant Terra tools or guides. Start Here moved beside Home in the main navigation, major page headers now share the green Terra research treatment, calculator results gained interpretation notes, and three deeper Learn guides were added.

Every primary navigation section now receives the current-page underline/highlight automatically, with cache-busted shared assets so the indicator appears reliably after deployment.

The main navigation now links directly to 401(k) Research, the homepage highlights the funds-vs.-SPY comparison, and the current navigation section is visibly marked so it is easier to tell where you are.

Terra added the AdSense account verification meta tag needed for site review. This verification tag does not itself display ads. Calculator formulas were not changed.

The site-wide Google Analytics tag now uses measurement ID G-W94PJNWH9X. No financial formulas or calculator behavior changed.

Google Analytics 4 was added site-wide using measurement ID G-W94PJNWH9X. Enhanced Measurement can report standard site interactions, while Google Signals and ad-personalization signals are disabled in the initial configuration. Calculator formulas were not changed.

Terra reached its first production foundation release with finalized trust/privacy wording, page-specific social metadata, conservative structured data, sitemap/canonical validation and a Search Console handoff. Calculator formulas were not changed.

The Advisor True-Cost annual projection now reports dividends generated in both reinvest and cash-income modes. The column heading switches between “Dividends reinvested” and “Cash dividends received.” Portfolio math is unchanged.

Improved phone tap targets, compacted stacked homepage sections, made calculator and Reality Check charts render at mobile dimensions instead of shrinking desktop text, improved horizontal table/filter scrolling, and normalized navigation on older tool pages. Financial formulas were not changed.

FAQ is again available directly from the site header across desktop and mobile navigation, making trust, terminology and common questions easier to find.

The homepage now starts with four real investor questions instead of one fee-focused entry point, adds visual previews of popular tools, moves the interactive fee example into a Terra Insight section, places My Terra after the tools, and exposes Learn, Research and Advanced paths more clearly.

Removed internal release labels from visitor-facing pages, simplified release language, and kept review/update dates as the public freshness signal.

Standardized percentage-cost modeling across the homepage, Investment Growth, Investment Fee and Retirement Reality Check; clarified compound-return assumptions; strengthened 401(k) input validation; simplified navigation; and expanded canonical search metadata.

Added Compound Interest, Investment Growth, 401(k) Employer Match and Investment Fee calculators. Each includes an optional graph, year-by-year table, print view and deliberate save/load support through My Terra.

Added browser-local saved scenarios, a simple return-visit dashboard and a 90-day checkup that routes changed areas back to relevant Terra tools.

Added a deterministic retirement-runway tool with today's-dollar results, spending-coverage context, cost comparisons, saved scenarios and a dynamically scaled chart with labeled age and portfolio-value axes.

Added a guided path for inheritance, bonuses and other lump sums, including goal buckets, records to gather, advisor questions and a Planning a New Investment mode in Tax Drag Reality Check.

The homepage fee illustration, return equation, Advisor True-Cost, Tax Drag Reality Check, 401(k) Reality Check, searchable FAQ remain the foundation of the site.