How we write, review, and stand behind every lesson.

Who writes the lessons

Every lesson on ClearMoneySchool is written by Joseph Citizen, a one-person editorial operation. There's no team of finance writers, no AI content farm, no outsourced contractors. That's both the weakness (slower output) and the strength (consistent voice and accountability).

Joseph has a BBA in Finance from Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi and is completing an MBA at the University of Illinois Gies College of Business, with a focus on Mergers & Acquisitions and Digital Marketing. None of that makes him a registered financial advisor, and the site is deliberately structured so it never needs to be.

The writing process

Each lesson follows the same five-step process:

1. Topic selection. Lesson topics come from gaps in basic financial literacy and recurring patterns in market news that everyday people are trying to understand.
2. First draft. Each lesson is drafted in plain English first, before any technical research, with the goal of explaining the concept the way you'd explain it to a smart friend who works in a different field.
3. Fact-checking against primary sources. Specific numbers, rules, and definitions are checked against authoritative primary sources (see "Sources we use" below). When sources conflict, the more conservative reading wins.
4. Plain-English review. Drafts are re-read specifically to remove jargon, replace technical terms with everyday language where possible, and add concrete examples with real numbers.
5. Disclaimer review. Every lesson is checked to ensure it provides general education only, never personalized investment, tax, or legal advice for any specific reader.

Sources we use

When we cite specific facts, rules, or numbers, we rely on these types of sources, in roughly this order of preference:

• Government and regulatory sources: IRS, SEC, FINRA, FDIC, NCUA, Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Academic finance research: Peer-reviewed papers from finance and economics journals; published research from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Federal Reserve banks
• Established financial reference works: The CFA Institute body of knowledge, primary textbooks like Bogle on index investing, Bernstein on asset allocation, Damodaran on valuation
• Verified market data: S&P, MSCI, Morningstar, and other widely-cited data providers, used for historical performance numbers
• Reputable financial journalism: Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Reuters (for current events context, with the original primary source verified when possible)

We do not use anonymous blog posts, personal-finance influencer content, or any source whose business model is selling financial products. We don't think those sources are necessarily wrong. We just don't think they belong in our citation chain.

Every tax, retirement, and benefit figure we cite is listed on the Source Ledger, mapped to its primary source and the date we last checked it. When a source updates, the figure updates and its date moves with it.

The Real Cost Method

Every lesson on ClearMoneySchool applies the same question to money decisions: what does this actually cost over a long compounding window, typically thirty years.

Most finance content stops at the sticker price. A $7 daily coffee is $7. A 0.75% expense ratio is 0.75%. A skipped 401(k) match is a missed bonus. The Real Cost Method runs the same numbers through a long-run compounding window, using historical market returns, to show the true cost of each small decision over time.

The point is not to scare anyone away from coffee. The point is to put small recurring choices on the same scale as big one-time ones. A $260 monthly car payment over five years and a $260 monthly index-fund contribution over thirty years are the same dollars treated differently by time. Most lessons people are handed about money skip that step. Ours don't.

The Real Cost Method appears in dedicated Real Cost lessons and as a callout inside other lessons where it's relevant. Where we run the numbers, we show the assumptions, the rate of return used, the time horizon, and the calculator that produced the figure.

Our editorial standards

On affiliates and revenue

ClearMoneySchool earns revenue from a small number of affiliate relationships with financial products we'd genuinely use ourselves. Every affiliate link is disclosed on the page where it appears, in plain English, before you click. We don't accept paid placement to recommend a product. We don't let an affiliate partner edit our content. We don't write “best of” SEO posts to chase commissions. If accepting a relationship would compromise our editorial standards, we decline. Premium tier launches in 2027 for advanced lessons and toolkits. The 50 core lessons, the glossary, and the calculators stay free.

On naming specific products

We name specific brokerages, funds, and accounts when they're functionally commodities and the alternative is making a lesson too abstract to be useful. Saying “a major no-fee brokerage” eight times in a lesson reads like we're hiding something. Naming three brokerages that all do the same thing is more useful. We name them as examples of a category, not as recommendations to choose those specifically over alternatives. We don't take affiliate revenue from any of them at the point we name them in lessons. Where an affiliate relationship exists, it's labeled separately on that page per the disclosure above.

On corrections

We correct mistakes in public. The /errata page lists every factual error we've published, what was wrong, what's now correct, and when we fixed it. We do not silently edit and pretend the error never happened. This is differentiator #6.

On reviewers

Lessons covering HR, payroll, and benefits topics are reviewed by Makayla Citizen before publication. Lessons covering complex tax, retirement, or estate topics are flagged for CFP/CPA review (panel additions in progress). All other lessons are reviewed by Joseph Citizen before publication. The “Reviewed by” line at the top of each piece is not automatic. It means a human read it before publication.

On citations

We cite primary sources. IRS publications, SEC filings, FRED data, peer-reviewed studies, official government sites, original company disclosures. We link directly to the source, not to a secondary article that quotes it. We date the claim because tax brackets, contribution limits, and rates change.

On advice

ClearMoneySchool is education. We are not investment advisors, tax professionals, or attorneys. Nothing on the site is personalized advice. For decisions about your specific situation, consult a licensed professional. The “Why no advice” section on /about explains the line and why we hold it.

What we will not do

These are firm lines. Crossing any of them would change what ClearMoneySchool is, so we don't.

• We will not give personalized investment advice. Even if we could (legally we can't), it wouldn't be appropriate without knowing your full financial picture.
• We will not rank specific products against each other or tell you which one to choose. Naming a product as a commodity-category example is fine. Telling you to pick Product X over Product Y is not. See "On naming specific products" above for the full standard.
• We will not accept sponsored editorial content. No sponsored reviews, no sponsored lessons, no sponsored Market Pulse articles. The editorial calendar is set by us, not by partners. Affiliate relationships, when present, are disclosed inline on the same page as the link.
• We will not link bank accounts or store financial data. We don't want it. The fewer ways we touch your actual finances, the more honestly we can teach you about them.
• We will not publish AI-generated content without human verification. AI tools, including Claude and ChatGPT, are used in drafting and research synthesis. Every fact, figure, citation, and date is then verified by a human against primary sources before publishing. See our AI disclosure for the full policy. Mistakes can still happen. When they do, please email us so we can correct them through our corrections process.

What this site is not

ClearMoneySchool is not:

• A registered investment adviser (RIA), broker-dealer, or financial planning firm
• A licensed accountant, CPA, or tax preparation service
• A licensed attorney or legal advice service
• An insurance broker or licensed insurance agent
• A platform for trading, investing, or holding financial products

For any decision involving real money, real taxes, or real legal consequences, consult a licensed professional whose job is your specific situation. ClearMoneySchool exists to help you understand enough to ask better questions of those professionals.

How to verify what we say

Don't take our word for it. We deliberately use specific examples with real numbers so you can verify them yourself. If we say a contribution limit is $7,500, you can look that up at IRS.gov in 30 seconds. If we say long-term capital gains rates are 0%, 15%, or 20% federal, the IRS publishes the brackets publicly.

On lessons that reference specific regulatory limits (IRS contribution limits, Social Security wage bases, federal tax brackets, FHFA loan limits, and similar), look for the small numbered citation markers inline (they link directly to the original government source) and the “Sources used” block at the bottom of the lesson. Every dated figure has a primary-source link.

The point of plain-English finance education isn't to replace authoritative sources. It's to make you a better reader of them.

Last updated: May 13, 2026. This page is a living document. As ClearMoneySchool grows and our process evolves, this page will be updated to reflect what's actually true about how lessons get made.