Privacy Policy

The short version

The Wallet Wisdom is a personal-finance publication. You read articles and use calculators; you do not create an account, and there is nothing to sign up for. That keeps this policy unusually short on the parts that normally matter most.

• We do not operate a newsletter, an account system, a contact form, or a lead-generation form of any kind.
• We do not ask for your name, email address, phone number, income, or employment status anywhere on this site.
• We do not sell or share personal information with financial-service providers, lead buyers, or data brokers. We never have.
• Our calculators run entirely inside your browser. What you type into them is never sent to us or to anyone else.
• What is collected: standard web-server request logs, Google Analytics, and Google AdSense advertising cookies. That is the complete list.

If you have read an older version of this policy, it described data collection that this site has never performed. That text has been removed. The document below describes what actually happens when you load a page.

Who runs this site

The Wallet Wisdom is published at thewalletwisdom.com.

For privacy questions, including any request under the laws described below, write to privacy@thewalletwisdom.com. A human reads that inbox.

What we collect

Server and CDN request logs

Every web server records the requests it answers, and ours is no exception. A log line contains your IP address, the URL you asked for, the page that referred you, your browser and operating system as reported in the user-agent string, the response code, and a timestamp. We use these to deliver pages, diagnose broken links and errors, and block scrapers and denial-of-service traffic. We do not use them to build a profile of you, and we do not join them to any other data set.

Google Analytics

The site uses Google Analytics 4. It records page path, page title, page URL, referrer, approximate location derived from your IP address, and device and browser type, and reports them to us in aggregate. We use it to see which articles people actually read and where they give up — nothing more granular than that.

Analytics is governed by your consent choice. Analytics storage is set to denied before the tag loads, so until you accept, the tag runs in a cookieless mode that sets no analytics cookie and cannot recognise you across visits. Reject analytics, or simply never choose, and it stays that way. You can also install Google's Analytics opt-out browser add-on to block it everywhere, not just here.

We never send names, email addresses, or anything you type into a calculator to Analytics. Our code also contains a click event for outbound sponsored links; there are currently no sponsored or affiliate links anywhere on the site, so that event does not fire. If that changes, the link will be labelled and this policy will be updated first.

You can prevent Analytics from running at all with Google's Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. Google explains how it handles data collected by sites using its services in How Google uses information from sites that use our services.

Advertising cookies

We show ads through Google AdSense. Google and its ad-technology partners set cookies and read device identifiers to choose ads, limit repetition, and measure results. The detail is in the advertising section below, including how to turn personalization off.

What we do not collect

There is no form on this website. No newsletter signup, no quiz, no eligibility checker that emails you a result, no "get matched with a lender" flow, no account registration, no comment section. We hold no customer database, because we have no customers — we have readers. The only way to give us personal information is to send us an email, in which case we hold that email in an ordinary mailbox for as long as it takes to answer you and to keep a record of corrections.

Calculators run in your browser

The calculators on this site are written in JavaScript that runs on your own device. Your inputs — income, balances, rates, repair estimates, whatever the tool asks for — are held in the page's memory while you use it and are discarded when you close the tab. They are not transmitted to our servers, not written to a database, not attached to an analytics event, and not shared with any advertiser or partner. Nobody at The Wallet Wisdom can see the numbers you enter, because they never leave your machine.

You can verify this yourself: open your browser's developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and use any calculator on the site. You will see no request carrying your figures.

Two things do still happen on a calculator page, because they happen on every page of the site: the page view itself is counted the way any other page view is, and the page carries one advertising unit below the calculator. Neither has access to what you typed. The page view records the URL, which is a fixed address with no numbers in it, and the ad script cannot read the calculator's state.

How we use what we collect

• To serve the site and keep it available, fast, and free of abusive traffic.
• To understand in aggregate which articles readers find useful, which we should update, and which we should retire.
• To show advertising, which is how the site pays for itself.
• To answer emails you send us and to log and correct errors readers report.
• To comply with the law where we are legally required to.

We do not use any of it to make decisions about you, to target you individually, or to build a marketing profile.

Cookies

Cookies are small files a site or its partners store in your browser. Here is every category in use on this site, what sets it, and how to stop it.

Every current browser lets you block or delete cookies, and block third-party cookies specifically, from its privacy settings. Blocking them costs you nothing here: no part of this site depends on a cookie to work.

Advertising disclosure

The Wallet Wisdom is free to read and is paid for by advertising. We display ads served by Google AdSense. Ad units carry a visible "Advertisement" label so you can tell them apart from our writing.

Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this site or other sites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and other sites on the internet. Google's use of the DoubleClick DART cookie, and the ad-technology partners it works with, are described in Google's advertising policies and how Google uses cookies in advertising.

Ads can be personalized or non-personalized. Personalized ads draw on the profile Google has built from your activity across sites and services. Non-personalized ads use only the content of the page you are reading and coarse signals such as approximate location; they still use cookies for frequency capping and fraud detection. You decide which you get:

• Google My Ad Center (the destination of the older google.com/settings/ads address) turns personalized advertising on or off for your Google account and lets you see and delete the interests Google has attached to you.
• The Digital Advertising Alliance's WebChoices tool and its consumer page at youradchoices.com/control opt you out of interest-based advertising from participating companies.
• The Network Advertising Initiative's opt-out page covers its member networks.
• Blocking third-party cookies in your browser, or using a content blocker, works regardless of any of the above.

EU and UK rules require consent before advertising or analytics cookies are set on a reader's device, and Google requires AdSense publishers serving traffic from those regions to collect that consent through a certified consent management platform. Where that message is shown to you, the choice you make in it governs what Google does with cookies on this site, and you can change it later by clearing cookies or by using the opt-out links above.

Advertising buys us nothing editorially. Advertisers do not see our articles before publication, cannot request changes, and cannot buy a mention. We do not run sponsored posts. If we ever do, they will be labelled as advertising at the top of the page, not slipped into an article.

Who we share information with

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with financial-service providers, lenders, insurers, debt-relief companies, or lead brokers. The only third parties involved in running this site are:

• Our hosting and content-delivery provider, which serves pages and keeps request logs on our behalf.
• Google, as our advertising provider (AdSense) and analytics provider (Google Analytics).
• Our email provider, if you email us.

We will also disclose information if a law, a court order, or a valid legal process requires it, or where it is necessary to protect our rights or someone's safety. If The Wallet Wisdom is ever sold or merged, the logs and mailbox described here would transfer with it, and this policy would be updated to name the new operator.

If you are in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland

Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation and the UK GDPR, we process personal data on these lawful bases:

• Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) for server logs and site security — the interest being to keep a public website running and defended against abuse. We weighed this against your interests; log data is operational and is not used to profile readers.
• Consent (Article 6(1)(a)) for analytics and advertising cookies where consent is required. Where Google's consent message applies, your choice there is the record of that consent, and you can change it at any time through your browser settings and the opt-out links above.
• Legitimate interests for correspondence, so that we can answer an email you chose to send us.
• Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) where a law requires us to retain or produce something.

You have the right to:

• Access — ask what personal data we hold about you and get a copy.
• Rectification — have inaccurate data corrected.
• Erasure — ask us to delete data we hold about you.
• Restriction — ask us to pause processing while a dispute is resolved.
• Portability — receive data you provided in a machine-readable form.
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interests, including any direct marketing (we do none).

To exercise any of these, email privacy@thewalletwisdom.com with enough detail for us to identify what you are asking about. We respond within one month, as the regulation requires. In practice our answer is often that we hold nothing identifiable about you beyond raw request logs, and that anything held by Google must be requested from Google.

You can complain to a supervisory authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office. In the EEA it is the data protection authority for your country; the European Data Protection Board lists them at edpb.europa.eu.

If you are a California resident

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA, these are the categories of personal information collected through this site in the past 12 months:

• Identifiers — IP address and cookie or device identifiers, from server logs, Google Analytics, and Google AdSense.
• Internet or network activity — pages requested, referring page, browser and device type, and interaction with ads.
• Approximate geolocation — city or region level, derived from IP address by Google, never precise location.

We collect no sensitive personal information as the CPRA defines it, and we do not use or disclose personal information for purposes requiring a right-to-limit notice. We have not disclosed personal information for a business purpose beyond the providers named above.

We do not sell personal information, and we never have. We also do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16. Personalized advertising through Google may qualify as "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising under California law. You can stop it by turning off personalized ads in Google My Ad Center, by using the DAA and NAI tools linked above, or by enabling Global Privacy Control in a browser that supports it — we treat a GPC signal as an opt-out request.

California residents have the right to know what is collected, to delete it, to correct it, to opt out of sale or sharing, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of those rights. We offer nothing different to anyone who exercises them, because there is nothing to withhold. To make a request, email privacy@thewalletwisdom.com with "California privacy request" in the subject line. You may use an authorized agent; we will ask for proof of their authority. The California Attorney General explains these rights at oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa.

Residents of other US states with comprehensive privacy laws — Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Texas, Oregon and others — have broadly similar rights and can use the same email address.

Children

This site is written for adults dealing with adult expenses. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act uses that term. We do not ask for age, because we ask for nothing. If you believe a child has provided personal information through this site, email privacy@thewalletwisdom.com and we will delete it. The FTC explains COPPA at ftc.gov.

How long anything is kept

• Request logs are kept by our hosting and CDN provider for their standard operational period and are not copied into any other system by us.
• Analytics data is held by Google under the retention period configured on the Analytics property. We receive only aggregate reports.
• Advertising cookies expire on the schedule Google sets for them; you can delete them at any time from your browser.
• Emails you send us are kept while we deal with them, and correction correspondence is kept as part of our editorial record.

We hold no other store of reader data, so there is nothing else to retain or delete.

International transfers

The Wallet Wisdom is published for a US audience. Our hosting provider and Google operate infrastructure in the United States and other countries, so if you read this site from outside the United States, the request, analytics, and advertising data described above may be processed there. For transfers of personal data out of the EEA or the UK, Google relies on the mechanisms set out in its own terms, including Standard Contractual Clauses. Google's privacy policy governs what it does with data it collects.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS. We reduce risk mainly by not holding data: there is no reader database to breach, no password to steal, and no financial information on our systems. Access to the site's code and hosting configuration is limited to the people who maintain it. No system is perfectly secure, and we would not claim otherwise.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes we update the date at the top of the page. Anything that materially changes what is collected — a newsletter, a comment system, a different ad network — will be described here before it goes live, not after. We keep no separate archive of older versions; if you need one, ask.

Contact

Privacy questions and requests: privacy@thewalletwisdom.com. Anything else: hello@thewalletwisdom.com. Our disclaimer and terms of use cover the rest of the legal ground.