Editorial standards

PennySaver USA exists for one reader: an American adult running a household on a budget, who wants the real savings and the plain answer without being sold to. Everything below follows from taking that reader seriously.

How we check deals and listings

• Deals and specials we gather come from the business's own website or an official source, and each links back to it.
• Every deal shows the day we last checked it was still on, and a deal nobody has re-checked in a while comes down.
• Events come down after they end, grocery sale prices on the day the sale ends, and free stuff as soon as it is taken (or after a month at most), so what you see is current.
• Businesses can't pay to change what a deal says or to hide a reader's report. Any paid placement will be labeled.
• Every listing and deal has a Report link, and reports are read by a person.

What our articles cover, and why

Local deals by city and state, shopping and groceries, eating out, travel, side income, holidays and gifts, and everyday money. We choose subjects by asking what a reader in that situation actually needs, not by what is easiest to write. Every article starts from a question a reader recognizes and ends with something they can do.

How an article is made

Our articles are produced with the help of writing tools, under an editorial brief that sets the reader, the voice, the structure, and the rules below. Each draft then goes through a separate editorial check against a fixed checklist: the count in the headline must match the list, every claim to a right, benefit or discount must be well established, no figure may be stated more precisely than we can support, no person, study, or quote may be invented, and every outside link must lead to a page that exists. Drafts that fail are rewritten before they are published. We say this plainly because we think readers deserve to know how what they read was made.

Sources

Where an article rests on rules or figures, it links to the source, most often an official one: a government agency, a program's own site, a statute. The full list appears at the foot of the article under “Sources cited,” and the byline shows how many there are. We describe a source as cited, not verified, and we encourage you to read it yourself before acting on it.

Pictures

The pictures in our articles are either stock photos, credited where the photographer asks for it, or illustrations created with image tools to show the situation being described. The illustrations do not depict real people, real homes, or real events, and any resemblance is coincidental. We choose an everyday, unpolished look on purpose, because our readers' lives are not catalogs.

What we won't do

• State a figure to the dollar or the decimal when we only know it roughly.
• Tell a reader to ask for a discount, a benefit, or a right that may not exist. A reader refused at the counter will not come back, and they would be right.
• Invent a person, a quote, a study, or a statistic.
• Let an advertiser or an affiliate program decide what we cover or what we say about it. See our affiliate disclosure.

Not financial advice

Our articles are general information, not financial, tax, or legal advice for your situation. Prices, deals, and rules change; check with the store, the company, or the agency before you act.

Independence and money

PennySaver USA is paid for by advertising on the page and, in some articles, by commissions on links. Neither affects what an article says. Advertisements are labeled. Articles that contain commission links say so at the top.

Corrections

We correct errors quickly and we note the correction on the article. Our corrections policy explains how to report one.

Contact

Suggestions, complaints, and deals we should know about are welcome through the contact page.