Editorial standards
This page sets out how the numbers on this site are produced, where figures come from, how often pages are checked, and what happens when something is wrong. The governing rule is the one that applies to everything published here: on a site dealing with people's actual income, a wrong number is worse than a missing one.
Who writes this
Everything on this site is written by one person, George I., whose background is set out on the about page. There is no editorial team and no outside contributors. If something here is wrong, there is exactly one person responsible for it.
That background is twenty years in payments and settlement timing. It is relevant to when money moves and why it arrives late. It does not make anyone a financial adviser, and this site is not written as one.
How the projections work
Every calculation on this site is arithmetic on figures you enter. There is no model, no machine learning, no assumed growth rate and no market prediction. The method for each tool is written out in full on that tool's own page, in language you can check against a piece of paper.
Specifically, the tools:
- Use only what you type in. Nothing is inferred about you.
- Step forward a day or a month at a time rather than averaging, because averages hide the timing problems these tools exist to find.
- Assume no growth, no interest and no investment return, since assuming any of those would flatter the result.
- Run in your browser. The free calculators need no account and send nothing anywhere.
The arithmetic is covered by automated tests that assert the worked examples printed on each page match what the code actually computes. That is there so the copy cannot quietly drift away from the calculation.
Where figures come from
Any figure about a third party, such as a competitor's price, should come from that company's own published page, with the date it was checked recorded next to it.
Where that has not been possible, the page says so rather than presenting the number as verified. At the time of writing, the comparison pages carry a visible notice that prices were taken from public review sources on 5 September 2026 rather than from each provider directly. That verification is outstanding, and the notice stays up until it is done.
Estimates are labelled as estimates. Round numbers used to illustrate a point are presented as examples rather than data. Where something is not known, the page says it is not known instead of filling the gap.
Reviews and dates
Content pages carry a last reviewed date at the foot. That date means a person read the page and confirmed it was still correct. It does not move because the site was rebuilt or redeployed.
The same dates drive the sitemap submitted to search engines, from a single file, so the date a reader sees and the date a crawler is told are always the same one.
Pages that make claims about third parties, meaning the comparison and alternatives pages, are the ones that go stale fastest and are checked most often. Legal pages carry their own effective date in the text instead.
Corrections
If a number here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it. Corrections that change a conclusion are noted on the page rather than made silently, and the review date is updated.
This matters more than it sounds. A finance site that quietly edits a wrong figure is asking you to trust that it has never done so before.
A published contact address for corrections is being added. Until it is here, this section is incomplete and it is fair to hold that against the site.
Conflicts of interest
Guardrail is a product, and this site compares it against competitors. That is a conflict of interest, so it is handled in the open rather than denied.
- Every page comparing Guardrail with other products carries a visible disclosure that Guardrail is ours, placed above the comparison rather than buried beneath it.
- Guardrail is ranked where it belongs. On the freelancer comparison it is third, and on the Mint alternatives page it is last, because on both of those questions other products serve most people better.
- Every entry for every product, including ours, states real weaknesses. A review with no downsides is not a review.
- There are no affiliate links anywhere on this site, no sponsored placements, and no payment of any kind for inclusion or position.
Projection is not advice
Guardrail tells you what your own figures imply. It does not tell you what to do about it, and it is not qualified to.
Where a tool suggests an action, such as moving a payment date, that is a mechanical output of the arithmetic rather than a recommendation about your circumstances. The tool does not know your circumstances. It knows the numbers you typed.
Nothing here is financial, tax or legal advice. Tax in particular varies so much by country, income and structure that any specific figure would be a guess about someone else, which is why these pages describe the mechanics and send you to an accountant for the number.
Where a page deals with a situation that can be genuinely serious, such as not having enough to reach payday, it points toward free debt advice services rather than improvising guidance it is not qualified to give.
What is not published here
- Ratings or review counts for Guardrail, until real users have left real reviews. Invented ratings in structured data are both dishonest and a manual action risk.
- Testimonials, user numbers or growth figures that cannot be substantiated.
- Credentials or qualifications the author does not hold.
- Predictions about interest rates, markets or the economy. That is not what this site is for and not what its author knows.
Last reviewed . Something wrong on this page? How we handle corrections.