Table of Contents
Our Editorial Promises
At FinanceJar, our number one priority is to deliver information that you can trust. We understand that people may look to us for financial guidance, and that’s a big responsibility that we take very seriously.
We have three guiding principles:
Honesty
We never write anything we don’t actually believe, and none of affiliates or partners have any say in the content on our website. When you read an article or review by one of our experts, you know you’re getting their real, honest analysis—not something they’re just being paid to say. If you’d like to know more, please read about how we make money.
Transparency
At FinanceJar, we’re passionate about transparency. We won’t leave you guessing—we disclose all of our research methodologies and income streams so that you know we have no conflicts of interest.
Accuracy
When you read articles online, it can be hard to tell whether you’re reading something by a real industry professional, or just a writer who’s researched the subject for a few days. All of our articles are reviewed by a team of finance experts before we publish them to ensure that they’re accurate and credible. That said, we know we aren’t perfect, and if you notice anything on our site that you think isn’t accurate, shoot us a message at [email protected] and we’ll correct it.
Editorial Overview
Personal finance can be confusing. Our goal is to make it make less.
We think that everybody deserves access to advice that they can actually understand and use. To this end, we strive to keep our articles as clear and to-the-point as possible, with no jargon.
We’re serious about our independence and integrity. Our writers and editors work completely independently from our advertisers and affiliates, and never receive any type of compensation from them.
Accuracy is as important to us as integrity—we view them as being inseparable. To ensure that we can stand behind everything we write 100%, we subject all of our articles to several rounds of fact-checking by our reviewers and experts.
We’re also picky about where we get our information from—we only source it from institutions that are both reputable and relevant (this means government agencies and primary sources, not blogs). Even then, we’re careful to cross-reference everything with multiple reputable sources so that it’s as accurate and reliable as it’s possible to make it.
Product Reviews
We review financial products, such as credit cards, loans, and credit repair companies.
Ultimately, we’re consumers, just like you, and we review these products with your needs in mind. If we wouldn’t use a product ourselves, we won’t recommend it or give it a good score. If you’re ever curious about the specific methodology we used, you can find it right at the bottom of each of our reviews.
Our relationships with affiliates may affect which products we choose to review and where those products appear in our articles, but will never affect what we write about them.
Editorial Process
All of our articles are intensively researched and undergo several rounds of editing before publication.
We make sure to always:
Rely on reputable, primary sources
When we have to research or verify a claim, we always go to the most primary source possible. This ensures that we’re not just repeating incorrect information that somebody else wrote.
Here’s where we get our information:
- Laws or regulations: We always go directly to governmental sources, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We don’t rely on summaries on third-party websites.
- Policies and products: Our information on companies in the credit and finance space comes straight from the companies in question. For instance, when researching the details of the FICO credit scoring model, we look to FICO themselves; information on credit reporting comes from the three main credit bureaus in the US; information on a credit card always comes from the issuing bank, and so on.
- Studies and surveys: When we cite a statistic that somebody else has researched, we’re careful to ensure that the organization that conducted the research is reputable, and, whenever possible, we’ll vet the study’s methodology.
Sometimes, we also need to conduct research on our own when we need information that isn’t available anywhere online (e.g., to explain a credit card issuer’s policies if they don’t publicize them). When this happens, we’ll contact the company ourselves and clearly explain that the information in our article came from our own investigative research.
Review and edit our articles thoroughly
Before publication, all of our articles are subject to three to four editing passes. We perform:
- An initial pass to ensure the content is broadly accurate
- A second pass to check the details (and to ensure they’re all clearly explained)
- A final proofreading pass before publication
Some of our articles are subjected to a fourth review, wherein we’ll send it to an independent expert in the credit or finance industry for a round of intensive fact-checking. We often do this for articles with claims that we suspect might be controversial or that are particularly hard to verify.
Continuously re-evaluate
We never stop checking our articles for accuracy. Particularly when it comes to reviews of products that may be updated frequently, we regularly revisit them to see whether anything that we wrote has changed (and to triple-check that we got it right to begin with).
If you ever find inaccurate information published on our site, please contact us about the error at [email protected].
