Editorial Standards: How We Research and Correct

Sources

Every story is based on public, verifiable sources: company filings and announcements, interviews given by the people involved, reporting from established news organizations, books, and reference works. We prefer primary sources and well-documented secondary ones. Each story lists its sources at the end.

Accuracy

We check names, dates and figures against more than one source wherever possible. When sources disagree, for example on a sum of money or a date, we say so or use the most widely documented version. Figures are reported in the currency and value of their time unless we state that they have been adjusted.

Each story shows the date its facts were last checked. In November 2026 we re-checked every story in the archive against its sources, figure by figure. Where we found a significant error, we corrected it and added a dated note to the story; smaller fixes were made without a note. Figures we could not confirm in a reliable source were removed.

Headlines

Headlines must be supported by the story beneath them. We do not use headlines that promise wealth, exaggerate results or mislead readers about what the story contains.

No financial advice

Our stories describe past business decisions. They are not recommendations. We do not tell readers to buy, sell or hold any investment, and lessons drawn from history are presented as observations, not instructions.

Independence

Companies and people we write about do not pay for coverage and do not review stories before publication. If we ever publish sponsored content, it will be clearly labelled. Affiliate links, where used, never decide what we write. See the affiliate disclosure.

Calculators

Our financial calculators follow the same standards as our stories, plus a few of their own:

• Formulas follow the official rule or the standard textbook method. Tax and payroll figures come from the IRS, the Social Security Administration and other U.S. agencies. Each page lists its sources and the date they were last checked.
• Before a calculator is published, and after every change, it goes through automated tests: random inputs checked against reference math written separately, unusual inputs such as zero or very large numbers, and checks on phone and desktop screens.
• Every page shows the tax year or the data period it uses. When the IRS or another agency publishes new figures, we update the calculator and its date.
• Results are estimates for education. They are not financial, tax or legal advice, and we don't recommend lenders, investments or other products.
• No calculator asks for your name, email or phone number, and none passes your numbers to a lender, adviser or other partner.
• Any ads sit outside the calculator and its results and are labelled as ads.

The details are in how our calculators work.

Photographs and illustrations

We publish only images we are allowed to reuse: photographs in the public domain or under free licenses such as Creative Commons, and photographs under licenses that allow commercial use without credit. Story photos are credited under the picture with their author and license. The photographs on the calculator section's home and category pages are under a license that does not require credit, so they carry no credit line; they are listed with their license on the image credits page. The explainer charts on calculator pages are our own drawings, made from each calculator's worked example. We resize, crop and compress images, but we don't alter what a photograph shows, and we never present an illustration or a generated image as a photograph.

Corrections

When we make a significant error, we fix it and add a dated note to the story explaining what changed. Typos and small clarifications are fixed without a note. When a calculator is wrong, we fix it and update the page's "Updated" date. To report an error, contact us.