Who writes this
CallitIQ is written and maintained by Charlie Brennan. I am not an attorney, a licensed insurance agent, a public adjuster, or a contractor, and nothing here is professional advice. What I do is read the primary sources carefully, work out the arithmetic that decides the question, and publish both alongside each other so you can check my working rather than take my word for it.
That non-credential is worth stating plainly rather than hiding, because it tells you exactly how to use the site. Where a question turns on a rule — what a CLUE report retains, how a percentage deductible is computed, which states apply one — I cite the regulator and you can verify it in one click. Where a question turns on professional judgment about your specific policy or your specific loss, the page says so and tells you to ask someone licensed. I try never to blur that line.
How the numbers are checked
Every figure a calculator uses is traceable. In practice that means four rules I hold myself to:
Primary sources first. State insurance departments, the CFPB, federal agencies and published industry bodies, linked directly on the page rather than summarised from a secondary article. The depreciation model in the payout calculator is calibrated against the Texas Department of Insurance's own published consumer example, not against a number I invented.
Say when a source is weaker. The premium-surcharge percentages come from an industry publication that does not disclose its methodology. That is stated on the page, and the field is editable so you can override it with whatever your own carrier tells you. A cited-but-imperfect number labelled as such is more useful than a confident one that is wrong.
Show the arithmetic. Every tool has a "show the math" panel. If you cannot reproduce the result by hand from the inputs, the tool has failed at its job.
Say what the number cannot capture. The claim calculators are explicit that they cannot price non-renewal risk, and that a liability claim involving injury to another person should be reported regardless of what any cost-benefit calculation says. A tool that only tells you the flattering half of the answer is worse than no tool.
What this site deliberately is not
CallitIQ does not sell anything, does not collect your information, and does not pass you to anyone. There is no lead form, no quote comparison, no affiliate arrangement with an insurer, adjuster or contractor, and no "speak to a specialist" button. The calculators run entirely in your browser — the numbers you type are never transmitted, because there is no server to transmit them to.
The site is funded by display advertising, which has no influence on the calculations, the recommendations, or which tools get built. This matters more here than in most categories: on these questions almost every other source you will find is paid by someone with a preferred outcome. An insurer's guide would rather you not file. A restoration contractor's calculator would rather you did. Neither is lying to you, but neither is indifferent, and the arithmetic looks different depending on who is paying for the page.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, I want to know and I will fix it. Statutes change, regulators update guidance, and a figure that was right in September may not be right next year. Every tool page carries a "last reviewed" date so you can see how stale it might be. If you find an error — especially one where a citation no longer supports the claim it is attached to — get in touch and it will be corrected rather than quietly left alone.
The prediction market feed
CallitIQ began as an automated feed matching public trend signals to live Kalshi and Polymarket odds, and that feed still runs hourly on the homepage and the topic pages. It is kept because it is genuinely interesting to browse, but it is not the point of the site any more, and individual market pages are deliberately excluded from search indexes. Prediction market odds shown here are informational and are not a recommendation to trade anything.