Terms & disclaimer

This is not financial advice

Everything here is general educational writing by someone who is not a financial advisor, planner, broker, accountant or attorney, and who holds no licence or credential in any of those fields. Nothing on this site is personalised advice, and reading it does not create an advisory relationship of any kind.

Your situation has details this site cannot know. If the decision is large or the circumstances are complicated — a business, an inheritance, a divorce, equity compensation, a serious tax question — that is worth paying a fee-only professional for.

The calculators are estimates

The budget, debt, compound interest and retirement tools are simplified models. They use assumptions you can change, and the returns and inflation figures they default to are long-run historical averages, not forecasts. Real markets do not deliver an average every year, and no output here is a prediction of what will happen to your money.

Affiliate links

Some links to credit cards and savings accounts are affiliate links, and a commission may be earned if you open an account through one. It costs you nothing extra.

Rankings are ordered on merit — estimated value for the card list, rate for the savings list — and never on what pays. Products that pay nothing appear alongside products that do, and are described the same way.

Rates and offers go stale

Interest rates, sign-up bonuses, fees and account terms change constantly, sometimes within a month. Figures here are checked as of the date noted beside each list, and are not a live feed. Always confirm current terms with the bank or issuer before applying.

Accuracy and liability

This site is offered as-is. Real care goes into getting things right, and corrections are made when something turns out to be wrong, but no guarantee is made that everything is accurate, complete or current. Decisions you make with your own money remain yours, and no liability is accepted for losses arising from acting on anything read here.

Content

The writing, diagrams and calculators are the author’s own. Quoting a paragraph with a link back is welcome. Republishing pages wholesale is not. Product images belong to the banks and card issuers they depict.