Editorial policy

Money guidance is only worth reading if you can see how it was arrived at. This page describes exactly how Loan Ledger works, so you can judge us against it.

What we publish, and what we don't

We publish general financial education: how a loan product works, what it costs, how to compare offers, and where the traps are. Everything here is written for a general audience.

We do not publish personalised financial advice. We don't know your income, your credit file, your tax position or your goals, and any page that claims to advise you without knowing those things is selling something. For advice specific to your circumstances, speak to a licensed professional.

How we research

• Primary sources first. Rules and rates come from the issuing body — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education, Freddie Mac's rate survey — not from another blog's summary of them.
• Every example is computed, not estimated. Worked examples use the standard amortization formula. We state the balance, the rate and the term for every figure, so you can reproduce it yourself in any calculator, including ours.
• We show the total, not just the payment. Any guide that quotes a monthly payment also quotes the total interest over the life of the loan. A lower payment on a longer term is usually more expensive, and hiding that behind a monthly figure is the oldest trick in lending.
• Illustrative rates are labelled as such. Rates move. Where we use a rate in an example, it is a representative figure for the sake of the arithmetic — never a quote, and never a promise of what you'll be offered.

Who reviews it

Every guide is written by a named author and reviewed before publication by a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional, who checks that the math holds, the product descriptions are current, and nothing reads as advice. The writer and the reviewer are both named on the article, with their credentials, on the about page.

Guides carry a "last updated" date. That is the date the content was last verified against current rules and rates — not the date a plugin last touched the file.

The line between advertising and editorial

Loan Ledger is funded by display advertising served through Google AdSense. That relationship is governed by three rules we do not break:

• Advertisers get no say in what we cover, or in what a guide concludes.
• No advertiser sees an article before it publishes, and no article is written in response to an advertiser's request.
• We take no commission on any loan. There are no affiliate links to lenders, no referral fees and no lead-generation forms on this site. We earn exactly the same whether you borrow or walk away.

Ads are always labelled "Advertisement" and are visually separated from editorial content. If you ever find an ad on this site that is designed to look like one of our articles, tell us and we will remove it. See the full advertising disclosure.

Corrections

We will get things wrong. When we do, we fix the article, and — where the error was material, meaning it could have changed a reader's decision — we note the correction at the foot of the page along with the date.

If you have found an error, please tell us: editors@loans.menusdutchbros.com. Include the URL and, if you can, the source that shows the correct figure. We read every one.

Use of AI

We use AI tools for research assistance and drafting support. No article publishes without a named human author editing it, a named human reviewer checking the math and the claims, and both of them accepting responsibility for what it says. We do not publish unreviewed generated text.