Advertising policy
SimpleMoneyHabits is funded by affiliate relationships with companies whose products I actually use. When you click through one of those links and sign up, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I don’t run banner ads, sell sponsored posts, or take money to write about products I haven’t tried. The full rules I hold myself to are below.
How this site is funded
SimpleMoneyHabits is independent. There’s no parent company, no investor, no editorial board telling me what to write or not write. The site pays for itself through affiliate relationships with a small set of financial products and services I personally use and would keep using if every affiliate program disappeared tomorrow.
That funding model is what makes the site possible. It’s also what makes the disclosures on individual posts important, because you should know what financial relationship the writer has with the product being discussed. I want that on the table from the first paragraph of every review, not buried in a footnote.
The rule I hold myself to
Before any product gets a review on this site, it has to pass a single test: would I keep using this if there were no commission attached. If the answer is no, the product doesn’t get reviewed. If the answer is yes, the review goes through whatever filter my actual experience produces, including the parts that aren’t flattering.
This is why the reviews on the site sometimes include real criticism. Acorns has a flat fee that stings on small balances. Robinhood is a contained speculation cage, not a long-term portfolio platform. Fundrise has had a Vehicle X situation worth being honest about. Those critiques exist because the goal is to tell you what the product actually is, not to maximize affiliate clicks. A review that pretends every product is perfect is worth nothing to a reader and erodes the only thing this site has, which is trust.
What you’ll see on this site
Three things, mostly:
Affiliate links inside reviews and relevant posts. When I write about a product I genuinely use, the links to that product are typically affiliate links. The post will say so explicitly in a disclosure block near the top. Clicking the link costs you nothing extra; if you sign up for the product, the company pays me a small commission for the referral.
Amazon Associates links inside book recommendations. The Best Personal Finance Books post and any other post that recommends a book typically links to Amazon through the Amazon Associates program. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Same logic: clicking costs you nothing, and the small commission helps keep the site running.
Occasionally, contextual mentions of products without affiliate links. Sometimes I’ll mention a product I use that I don’t have an affiliate relationship with, because the product is relevant and useful. Those mentions earn me nothing. They’re there because they’re true.
What you won’t see on this site
A few things I’ve decided not to do, and don’t plan to:
Banner ads, programmatic ads, or display ads of any kind. The site is intentionally ad-free in the visual sense. No popups, no sidebar banners, no auto-playing video ads, no sponsored cards in the middle of articles. The reading experience is clean by design.
Sponsored posts. No company pays me to write about their product. Every review on this site is something I chose to write because I have an opinion about the product, not because I was paid to have an opinion.
Pay-to-play affiliate placements. I don’t accept payment to add a product to my recommended list, push it higher in a comparison, or write a more favorable review than my actual experience supports. The affiliate relationships on the site are with products I was already using and writing about; the affiliate part came after the recommendation, not before.
If you ever read a review on this site that feels like it’s trying too hard to push a product, flag it. Either I missed something in editing, my honest opinion on the product is genuinely positive in a way that’s coming across as salesy, or the post needs a rewrite. Email-style on X works: @HabitsProf. Honest feedback makes the site better.
Disclosure standards on individual posts
Every post that contains affiliate links includes a clear disclosure block near the top of the post identifying the relationship. The disclosure is in plain language, not buried legal type. The goal is for a reader to know, before they finish the first paragraph, that financial links exist on the page they’re about to read.
This is also a Federal Trade Commission requirement for affiliate content, and one that I’d hold to even if it weren’t required, because anything else would be hiding the ball.
Things change
If the funding model of the site changes meaningfully (new affiliate partners added, ones removed, a new revenue stream introduced), this page gets updated and the date stamp at the bottom moves forward. The “Last updated” line at the bottom is the truth of when this policy was current.
Questions
If you have a question about how this site is funded, why a particular product is on it, or anything else related to advertising and affiliate relationships, the best place to reach me is on X at @HabitsProf. I read replies and DMs.