Editorial Policy

Every post on this site follows the same workflow: research, draft, fact-check, citation pass, compliance pass, publish, and quarterly refresh. This page documents what that looks like in practice so readers can evaluate the rigor of our analysis.

The seven-stage publication workflow

1. Research. Every post begins with primary-source research: the company's published fee schedule, the BBB and BCA pages, TrustPilot and ConsumerAffairs reviews, and the relevant IRS publications and IRC sections. Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter are used for sentiment signals — never as primary fact sources.
2. Draft. Drafts are written in the voice described in our methodology: conservative, citation-heavy, specific numbers, no exclamation marks, no superlatives without data.
3. Fact-check. Every quantitative claim is verified against at least one primary source. If a fact cannot be sourced, it is removed.
4. Citation pass. Each IRS rule claim must cite the IRC section, IRS Publication, 26 CFR section, or an irs.gov FAQ URL. Each company-specific claim must cite BBB, BCA, TrustPilot, TrustLink, ConsumerAffairs, SEC EDGAR, FINRA BrokerCheck, or the company's own published fee schedule.
5. Compliance pass. The draft is run through our published banned-phrase list (no "guaranteed return", "risk-free", "tax-free retirement", etc.) and our AI-slop phrase list. The investment disclaimer and affiliate disclosure are confirmed to be present above the fold.
6. Publish. The post goes live with a publication date, an author byline (always a real, named person), and complete structured-data markup including Article, Person, and where applicable Review schemas.
7. Quarterly refresh. Every post older than six months is reviewed. We re-pull the company fee schedules, re-check BBB complaint counts, update any IRS contribution limits that have changed for the new year, and update the "Last modified" date.

Source tiers

• Tier 1 (primary): IRS publications, the Internal Revenue Code, 26 CFR, Tax Court opinions, SEC EDGAR filings, FINRA BrokerCheck, and the company's own published fee schedule.
• Tier 2 (high-credibility secondary): Money.com, Bankrate, CNBC Select, Business Insider, Forbes Advisor, Kiplinger, Investopedia, and similar established personal-finance outlets when they cite primary sources.
• Tier 3 (sentiment / supplementary): Reddit, YouTube, Twitter/X, TrustPilot reviews. Used to surface real-user concerns, never as the sole basis for a factual claim.
• Excluded: Anonymous review sites with no author bylines, AI-generated content farms, and any source that cannot be independently verified.

Conflict-of-interest controls

Affiliate revenue is the primary business model of this site. We manage the conflict the way reputable outlets do: a public methodology with a fixed scoring rubric, identical treatment of affiliate and non-affiliate companies, disclosure of every paid relationship at the top of every post containing such a link, and a willingness to publish negative reviews of affiliate partners when the data supports them. See the methodology for the specific rubric.

What we will never do

• Accept payment for a positive review.
• Remove a negative review at a company's request.
• Pre-publish a draft to a company for approval. (We will fact-check specific claims with companies, but the company does not see the draft.)
• Use AI-generated content without a human author's review and editorial responsibility.
• Misrepresent the author's credentials. Marcus Sterling is not a licensed financial advisor; we say so clearly.

How to flag an issue

Errors, biased framing, missing context, or stale data: send specifics via the contact page with the URL of the affected post and the issue. We respond within five business days.

Last updated: 2026.