Clear Money Guide
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Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: Clear Money Guide publishes small, versioned, citable datasets computed from official public sources or read from statutes. Everything here is free to use with attribution and a link. 20 datasets are indexed below, seven are downloadable as CSV on this page, and the archived citable copies — each with a permanent DOI — are indexed at the research library. Every figure is independently recomputed or read at its primary source before publication, and corrections are published rather than quietly applied.
Everything we publish as data
This is the index of the datasets themselves — what each one covers, how big it is, and when it last changed. Every row below was measured from the live page at build time, not typed into a list, because a hand-maintained index drifts away from the thing it indexes and then quietly lies about it.
How this differs from the research library: that page indexes the archived, citable versions — frozen snapshots with permanent DOIs you can cite in a paper and rely on not to move. This page indexes the living copies, which are corrected whenever we find something wrong. Cite the DOI; read the page.
Computed benchmarks and studies
We did the arithmetic ourselves, from official microdata or a corpus we assembled. These are the datasets where the number did not exist until we computed it.
| Dataset | Size | Updated |
|---|---|---|
| Probate cost and small-estate limits, every jurisdiction | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| US investment-adviser counts, fees and firm structure | 34 rows | 2026-08-04 |
| Household spending in retirement, by age band | index | 2026-08-07 |
State law tables
One row per jurisdiction, each read from a statute or a state agency, each carrying its source and the date it was read. Where we could not reach a source the cell says so rather than carrying a plausible number.
| Dataset | Size | Updated |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit caps, return deadlines, penalties | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| Remote online notarization status and fee caps | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| Free-look windows on new life policies | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| Grace periods and what happens to the death benefit | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| Guaranty coverage if the insurer fails | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| When a final paycheck is due, and the penalty | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| Salary-range disclosure duties | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| Paid family and medical leave programmes | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| The convenience-of-the-employer rule | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| State capital-gains treatment, with the combined rate | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| LLC formation cost | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| Annual report duties and fees | 51 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| Which states allow a transfer-on-death deed | 53 rows | 2026-08-06 |
| Execution requirements for a valid will | 45 rows | 2026-08-06 |
Maintained trackers
Figures that change on a known schedule. These are wired to a claims register, so when a source publishes a new number we know which pages carry the old one.
| Dataset | Size | Updated |
|---|---|---|
| Every annual retirement and tax figure we publish | 123 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| State tax changes taking effect in 2026 | 24 rows | 2026-08-07 |
| Figures already known for 2027 | 11 rows | 2026-08-07 |
Indexes, archives and machine-readable copies
Where to find the citable version, the charts, and the terms.
| Dataset | Size | Updated |
|---|---|---|
| The citable library – archived snapshots with permanent DOIs | index | 2026-08-07 |
| Statistics pages, each built on owned data | index | 2026-08-07 |
| Chart gallery, free to reuse | index | 2026-08-07 |
| Paste-ready figures for journalists | index | 2026-08-07 |
| The licence: CC BY 4.0, no permission needed | index | 2026-08-07 |
| How we source, verify and correct | index | 2026-08-07 |
| Every figure we hold about a state, one sheet per jurisdiction | 51 sheets | 2026-08-07 |
Free to reuse with attribution under CC BY 4.0. No permission needed and no need to tell us, though we would rather hear from you than not. Where a table has gaps, the gaps are marked — a blank cell in our tables means we could not verify it, never that the rule does not exist. Which of the two a blank means is stated on each page. Librarians, educators, and journalists: this table is CC BY 4.0 — reuse with attribution is welcome, and we answer methodology questions at contact@.
US Advisor Statistics 2026 (CSV)
Download: clear-money-guide-advisor-statistics-2026.csv — 53 rows, one per US state/jurisdiction (50 states + DC, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands).
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| state_code | Two-letter jurisdiction code (main-office state) |
| firm_count | SEC-registered investment adviser firms |
| rank_by_firm_count | National rank by firm count |
| total_regulatory_aum_usd | Sum of Form ADV Item 5.F.(2)(c) total regulatory AUM, USD |
| rank_by_aum | National rank by total regulatory AUM |
| median_firm_raum_usd | Median firm regulatory AUM (positive-RAUM firms only) |
| firms_under_100m … firms_over_10b | Firm counts by regulatory-AUM size band |
Source & vintage: SEC Investment Adviser public roster (FOIA download), report date July 1, 2026; 16,935 firms after CRD dedup; 615 firms reporting $0 RAUM excluded from AUM statistics. Human-readable pages for every jurisdiction live on the US advisor statistics hub; the process is documented in our methodology.
License: free to reuse in articles, research, and apps with attribution to Clear Money Guide and a link to clearmoneyguide.com/advisor-statistics/. New editions will be released as the SEC publishes new rosters; prior editions remain available so citations stay reproducible.
What these datasets show
If you are looking for the reportable finding rather than the raw file, these are the three that most often surprise people, each traceable to the statute in the dataset:
- A small-estate affidavit almost never clears a house. Across all 51 jurisdictions only a minority have a small-estate route stated to reach real property. Most confine it expressly to personal property, and the rest do not say, which in practice means a title company will not rely on it. The binding constraint is the character of the asset, not its value. The per-state column is in the reference table and the embeddable widget; the CSV carries the thresholds, fee models, schedules and citations.
- Most states publish no probate fee schedule at all. Only a small minority of jurisdictions set compensation by a statutory percentage schedule; most apply a reasonableness standard and the rest are hybrids, which is why probate quotes vary so widely and why any calculator claiming a precise figure for those states is guessing.
- Thirteen jurisdictions levy an estate tax and five an inheritance tax — twelve states plus the District of Columbia on the estate side, and Maryland alone levies both. Counts of “death tax states” that run higher than this usually include states whose tax was repealed. See the state tax table.
Using these in a story? Everything here is free to reuse with attribution and a link, including the numbers above. If a figure matters to your piece and you want the underlying statute pulled, or a cut of the data we have not published, ask — we would rather you quote it accurately. See methodology and corrections.
Statute Provenance Register 2026 (CSV)
Download: cmg-statute-provenance-2026.csv — 149 rows, one per published state-law page, across 47 jurisdictions and four subject areas: small-estate affidavits, advance directives, transfer-on-death instruments, and powers of attorney.
This dataset answers a question almost no publisher answers in public: for each page, which primary source was actually read, and when. It is the audit trail behind the state-law pages rather than a restatement of them.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| page_url | The Clear Money Guide page the row describes |
| wing | Subject area: small_estate, advance_directive, tod, poa |
| jurisdiction | US state, DC, or MULTI_STATE for pages spanning several |
| authority_citations | The statute or uniform act the page relies on, pipe-separated |
| source_documents | The primary-source URL(s) actually read, pipe-separated |
| statute_last_verified | Date the source document was read (blank = never established) |
| verification_basis | How that date was established, or that it was not |
| days_since_verified | Age of the verification at the time the register was built |
| page_created / page_last_modified | Page dates, which are NOT verification dates |
| citations_appearing_in_page | Every section number printed on the page, pipe-separated |
Honest limits. 141 of the 149 rows carry an established verification date; 8 do not, and those rows say so in verification_basis rather than being quietly dated from the page. 97 rows carry both a named authority and the source URL. A page modification date is not a verification date and the two are kept in separate columns for that reason.
Correction log. 2026-08-04: the first edition carried 149 rows, one of which — a District of Columbia small-estate page — was written but unpublished, so its URL returned 404. A dataset that lists a page nobody can open is wrong, so that row was removed and the file reissued at the same address. 2026-08-05: that page has now been published, so the row is restored and the file is back to 149. Both editions were reissued at this same address, and every URL in the current edition was re-checked serially and returns 200.
Statute Source Fingerprints 2026 (CSV)
Download: cmg-statute-source-fingerprints-2026.csv — 108 rows, one per primary-source document behind the register above.
Each row carries a SHA-256 hash of the document’s normalized text, so anyone can re-fetch the statute later and prove whether it has been rewritten. Checking that a cited section URL still returns 200 proves nothing — repealed sections keep resolving. Michigan is the worked example: MCL 700.5501–5505 were repealed effective July 1, 2024 and replaced by the Uniform Power of Attorney Act (2023 PA 187), and the old section numbers still load.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| source_url | The primary-source document fetched |
| fetch_outcome | OK, UNREACHABLE, or BLOCKED_INTERSTITIAL |
| http_status / content_type / bytes / text_chars | What the server returned |
| fingerprint_kind | normalized_text_sha256 — markup and whitespace stripped before hashing |
| fingerprint_sha256 | The hash itself; re-run it later to detect a rewrite |
| drift_since_previous | UNCHANGED, CHANGED, or BASELINE (first observation) |
| previously_seen / checked | The two observation dates the drift verdict compares |
Honest limits. Of the 108 documents, 95 were fetched cleanly (92 unchanged against a prior observation, 2 changed, the rest first observations), 11 were unreachable, and 2 sat behind a bot interstitial. Those 13 are labelled in fetch_outcome, not dropped. An unreachable host keeps its last fingerprint, so a CHANGED verdict recorded immediately after an UNREACHABLE one should be re-run before it is believed.
Source & vintage: built 2026-08-04 from the state statute research behind the small-estate, probate and estate-planning page families. Method is documented in our methodology.
License: free to reuse in articles, research and apps — including commercially — under CC BY 4.0, with attribution to Clear Money Guide and a link. Statutes are public domain; the compilation and verification are ours.
Suggested citation: “Statute Provenance Register 2026” and “Statute Source Fingerprints 2026,” Clear Money Guide, 2026, clearmoneyguide.com/data/. Free to use with attribution and a link; no permission needed and nothing to sign.
Methodology
This page was materially reviewed on July 23, 2026. Datasets are educational reference material, not personalized financial advice. See our methodology, Editorial Policy, Corrections, and Disclaimer.
Related reference tables: statute-cited probate costs by state and small-estate limits by state, maintained under the same methodology.
Correction, 13 August 2026. The file served at /data/estate-probate-2026.csv is generated by a site plugin that our publishing toolchain cannot write. It still carries three small-estate figures we have since withdrawn (South Carolina $25,000, Virginia $50,000, North Dakota $50,000), cites the wrong Act for Iowa’s increase, and understates three Nevada figures. Cite the corrected, dated file instead: the corrected 13 August 2026 CSV. Every download link and every distribution.contentUrl in our page content points at it. Two surfaces we cannot write still point at the legacy path — /llms.txt and the /embed/probate-cost/ widget, both emitted by the same plugin. And superseded copies of our CSVs are never edited in place: they keep serving at their old URLs so existing links resolve, so take the file linked here rather than one you downloaded earlier.
Second dataset now available: Probate cost and small-estate limits by state (CSV) — all 50 states + DC with fee models, statutory schedules, filing fees, small-estate thresholds, and statute citations; compiled July 2026 under the same attribution license. Human-readable versions: probate cost by state and small-estate limits by state.
Third dataset now available: State taxes on retirement income, estate tax, and inheritance tax (CSV) — all 50 states + DC with income-tax treatment of Social Security, pensions and 401(k)/IRA withdrawals, estate and inheritance tax status, and statute citations; compiled and adversarially verified July 2026 under the same attribution license. Human-readable versions: retirement taxes by state, estate tax by state, and inheritance tax by state — plus 20 single-state deep-dive guides.
Citation-formatted summaries: probate cost statistics and retirement tax statistics compress these tables into the numbers writers cite most, each free to use with a link.
License: the datasets and tables published on this page are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, republish, and adapt them — including commercially — with attribution to Clear Money Guide and a link to clearmoneyguide.com. Statutes and primary-source citations remain public domain; the compilation, verification, and presentation are ours.
The 2026 report: The State of Estate Planning 2026 collects the eight findings from this site’s statute-cited data in one citable place — including which jurisdictions’ small-estate route reaches real property, and which publish a probate fee schedule at all. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
The Cost of Dying Index 2026 (CSV)
What settling an estate costs in each of the 51 US jurisdictions at three standard estate sizes ($250,000, $500,000, $1,000,000): the statutory probate fee schedule where one exists, the court filing fee, state inheritance tax on an estate passing to a child, the state estate-tax exemption, and whether the small-estate route reaches real property. 153 rows. Computed from our own statute-verified datasets on 2026-08-06 — no new research, and every field that could not be verified says so rather than carrying a number. Download the CSV · read the index. Free under CC BY 4.0.
US Will Execution Law 2026 (CSV)
Statute-verified will execution requirements for 44 US jurisdictions: witness count, whether an interested witness purges the gift or voids the will, holographic and electronic recognition, whether a notary is required for validity, and self-proving affidavit availability — 243 statute-verified fields, each with its citation, source URL and confidence flag. Seven jurisdictions and 21 individual fields are flagged unverified with the access barrier named, because a dataset that hides its gaps is not worth citing. Download the CSV · read the index. Free under CC BY 4.0.
Reusing any of this? One licence covers all of it — free to reuse, adapt and republish, including commercially, with attribution. No permission needed. Figures we quote from the IRS, SSA, BLS or a state agency belong to their publishers and should be cited to them, with the data year.
Retirement Account Balances by Age 2022 (CSV)
What US households actually hold in retirement accounts, by age of head. Median, mean, 25th/75th/90th percentiles and the share holding nothing, for six age cohorts, across all families in each cohort including those with zero — computed by us from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances 2022 Summary Extract (variable RETQLIQ, quasi-liquid retirement assets; 22,975 records, 4,595 households, 131,306,389 weighted families). Each statistic is computed within each of the survey’s five imputation replicates and then averaged, never pooled — the most common error in secondary summaries of this survey. Our reconciliation against the Board’s own published table for the same wave matches its share-holding figure exactly (54.3%) and its conditional mean to 0.027%. The method was pre-registered before any estimate was computed. Download the CSV, the computation script and the pre-registration · read the statistics · look up your own percentile. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21762536. Free under CC BY 4.0.
The Advice Gap (2026)
How many US households fall below stated advice-firm account minimums. Crosses this site’s advisor minimums benchmark (28 firms publishing a firm-wide minimum, median $750,000) against Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances 2022 microdata (22,975 records, 131.31m weighted households). Result: between 88.0% and 93.7% of households hold less than $750,000 — published as a range across two asset definitions, because the definitions do not match what a minimum measures. Full method and limitations: The Advice Gap. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0. No CSV: this site has no file-publishing route, so the complete result set is published inline on the study page rather than behind a download that does not exist.
Quotable facts
The headline figures from every dataset and study on this page, in one place — each with a stable anchor, its primary source and its data vintage, written so a single sentence can be lifted and still stand up. It also lists what we deliberately do not claim, and why. Quotable facts.
The inventory is embedded in that page as parseable JSON, because this site has no file-publishing route and we would rather say so than link to a download that does not exist.