Editorial Standards

How we write

Every fact on this site traces back to a primary source — the CFPB, the FTC, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Register, or the actual text of a state statute. Not a blog, not another "debt help" site repeating what it read somewhere else. If we can't point to where a claim comes from, we don't publish it.

Who actually checks this before it goes live

We run a two-tier review process. Plain restatements of something a primary source already says clearly — what an IRS notice itself says its purpose is, what a statute's text actually reads — get checked directly against that source by our editorial team. Anything with real dollar math (our calculators), a court deadline, a tax consequence, or an outright recommendation has to be signed off by a retained, credentialed reviewer before we publish it.

We're not lawyers, CPAs, or financial counselors, and nothing here is advice tailored to your specific situation. When we do cite a credentialed reviewer, you can independently verify their license or accreditation yourself — we link straight to their state bar or accreditation registry from their author page.

How we make money, and what that doesn't touch

We don't have any paid or affiliate relationships with any company on this site right now — nobody is paying us for a placement, a link, or a ranking anywhere here, including in the reviews. If that changes, any page with a paid relationship will carry a visible, proximate disclosure saying so, and that relationship will never be allowed to touch the facts we report or how we build a comparison, ranking, or review verdict.

If we got something wrong

Tell us, and we'll check it against the primary source ourselves. When we confirm something needs fixing, we log it below with the date and a plain description of what changed — no quietly editing the page and hoping nobody noticed.