EDITORIAL POLICY

 Editorial Policy and How We Make Money

Trust is the only asset an independent publisher has. So here is the whole arrangement, stated plainly.

How the site makes money

Display advertising. Affiliate links on some pages. If you click an affiliate link and take an action, this site may receive a commission, and it costs you nothing extra.

What advertising does not buy

Advertisers and affiliate partners do not see articles before publication. They cannot request changes. They cannot pay for inclusion, for placement, or for a favourable assessment.

When a product is a poor deal, that gets written down. Including products this site could earn from. If that ever stops being true, the site has stopped being worth reading.

Sponsored posts are not accepted.

How articles get researched

Primary sources first. IRS publications for tax and retirement figures. SSA releases for Social Security. CMS and Medicare.gov for Medicare. StudentAid.gov for federal student aid. CFPB materials for consumer lending and credit. Federal Reserve, Treasury and Freddie Mac for rates and market data. Policy documents for insurance terms.

Not other articles. That is how errors propagate across the internet until a wrong number becomes the number everyone repeats.

Dating figures

Every number that resets annually is dated in the article. Contribution limits. Tax brackets. Benefit amounts. Premium levels. Program thresholds.

This is the simplest possible honesty about how current something is, and most sites skip it.

Reviews and updates

Articles are reviewed at least once a year. Anything containing an annually-adjusted figure is reviewed each January, when the new numbers are published.

Articles carry a last-updated date.

Handling uncertainty

Where rules vary by state, that gets said, rather than presenting one state's rule as if it applied everywhere.

Where something is a real judgment call, the trade-offs get presented instead of a recommendation invented to sound decisive.

Where the answer is not known, it stays not known.

Corrections

Substantive corrections get made and noted on the page. Report errors to corrections@financebyulku.com.

The limits

This site is written by someone who is not a licensed financial professional. It explains how things work. It cannot tell you what to do with your money, and it does not pretend otherwise.

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