Editorial Standards
We write about money for people whose money is not abundant. That imposes obligations, and these are ours.
Where our facts come from
We work from primary sources wherever they exist: the agency that took the action, the court that received the filing, the bureau that collected the data. When we rely on another news outlet's reporting, we say so in the article, and we do not present their account as our own verification.
Every statistic we publish carries the number, what it measures, the period it covers, and a link to the document it came from. If a figure cannot be traced to a source, it does not get published.
What we do when we cannot verify something
We tell you. An article that says "we looked for this number and could not find it" is more useful than one that quietly fills the gap with an estimate. We do not round, extrapolate, or reconstruct figures from memory.
Where we are drawing a conclusion rather than reporting a fact, we mark it as our own view.
We do not give financial advice
We are journalists, not financial advisers, and nothing we publish is financial, legal, or tax advice. We report what happened and what it does to your money. We do not tell you what to buy, when to buy it, or how to invest.
Where a topic sits close to that line — retirement benefits, bank deposits, credit — we describe what the responsible agency says and point you to it, rather than substituting our judgment for a professional's.
Affiliate links
Some articles contain affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission if you buy through them at no additional cost to you. Three rules govern them, and we do not bend them:
- A disclosure appears above the first affiliate link on the page, every time.
- No advertiser or affiliate partner sees an article before publication, and none has ever been given the right to.
- We do not place affiliate links on articles where a reader arrives frightened or in trouble. If a story is about people at risk of losing money, we are not selling to them on that page.
Full detail: our affiliate disclosure.
Advertising
Display advertising on this site is served programmatically. Advertisers have no involvement in, and no advance sight of, our reporting. Ad placements are kept out of the body of an argument and never disguised as editorial content.
Corrections
We correct in public. When we get something wrong, we fix the article, mark what changed and when, and leave the correction visible rather than deleting the error. If you have found a mistake, tell us — this is the fastest way to make the site better.
Use of AI
We use software tools in research and drafting, as most newsrooms now do. No article is published without a human deciding what it says, checking the facts against the sources listed at the bottom of it, and putting a name on it. Responsibility for what is published rests with people, not tools.
Who writes here
Every article carries a named author. If you want to know who wrote something and what they know about the subject, that is a reasonable thing to want, and you should not have to hunt for it.
Last updated: Tuesday, July 14, 2026. Questions about these standards: contact us.