Affiliate Disclosure

The short version

Some of the financial products mentioned on PlainCents — credit cards, consolidation loans, savings accounts, mortgage products — are linked through affiliate programs. When you click one of those links and sign up for the product, the company may pay PlainCents a commission. That commission is how the site stays free for everyone else.

You do not pay more for using an affiliate link. The price or rate you see on the partner's site is the same one you would get going there directly.

What affiliate commissions do not change

• The math in our calculators. Every formula is the standard amortization or finance math your bank would use. Commissions do not bend a number.
• The conclusions in our guides. If snowball is faster than avalanche for the numbers you typed in, we say so — regardless of whether either method has an affiliate offer attached.
• Whether we tell you a product is right for your situation. If a product is a poor fit, we say that too. A bad-fit click does not pay anyway.

What affiliate commissions can influence

When there are several reasonable products in a category — say, half a dozen balance-transfer cards that all have similar terms — we are more likely to feature the ones with affiliate programs we participate in. That choice does not make those products better than the alternatives; it just means we have a partnership with that company.

Where it matters, we will say so. If we recommend a specific product, we explain what it is good for, what its limitations are, and what an obvious alternative is.

How we mark affiliate links

• Affiliate links carry the rel="sponsored" attribute, which tells search engines and accessibility tools that the link is paid.
• Pages that include affiliate links carry a visible disclosure label near the link or in the page header.
• This disclosure page is linked from the footer of every page on the site.

This is the FTC standard for disclosure of affiliate relationships in the United States. We follow it because it is the right thing to do — and because trust, once lost, is very expensive to win back.

Affiliate networks we work with

PlainCents may participate in affiliate programs run by third parties such as credit-card issuers, consolidation lenders, savings-account providers, and mortgage marketplaces. The list of active partners changes over time. When we link to a product, the link is to the partner's own application or product page — not to a PlainCents-controlled storefront.

Other ways we might earn money

Today, affiliate commissions are the only way PlainCents earns money. We do not currently run display ads, sell sponsored content, or charge for any feature. If that ever changes — for example, if we add display ads or a paid tier — we will update this page and disclose those revenue streams clearly.

Related pages

For how affiliate links interact with what we collect about you, see the privacy policy. For the editorial stance behind our recommendations, see about PlainCents.