Our standards

Editorial Guidelines

Last updated: August 4, 2026

Every article on Her Own Compass follows the same rulebook: documented experience first, exact numbers, named sources, human review before publishing, and fast corrections. This page is that rulebook, in public.

Who we write for

Women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s managing money on one income — rebuilding after divorce, running a single-paycheck household, or planning their most independent decade. Every guide assumes one income and no partner backup, because that’s the reader’s reality.

Our content standards

  • Documented experience before advice. A strategy is recommended only after it has survived a real one-income budget, and the article says whose budget it was. Product write-ups name who used the item and include the drawbacks next to what worked.
  • Whose experience it is, stated plainly. An experience is written in the first person only when it belongs to the person under the byline. Everything else — the numbers, the months, the moments other women lived — is told as theirs, with the community or source named.
  • Exact numbers, dated prices. “Save more” never appears here; “$417 a month for 12 months” does. Quoted prices and rates carry the date they were checked.
  • Named sources. Financial concepts, statistics, and safety data are checked against and credited to reputable sources — government data, official program pages, and established research.
  • Clear boundaries. We publish education, not personalized financial advice. YMYL articles (money, insurance, credit) open with a disclaimer, and credit content always assumes paying balances in full.
  • Independence from monetization. Affiliate partnerships never decide verdicts or rankings — the Affiliate Disclosure covers how links work.

How an article is made

  1. Research & outline — the topic gets a detailed brief: questions to answer, sources to check, numbers to verify.
  2. Drafting — written in Rachel Bennett’s voice from documented experience and verified research, with every experience attributed to the person who lived it. Writing tools, including AI assistance, may support drafting — the AI Content Policy explains exactly how.
  3. Fact-check & human review — a human editor checks every claim, number, and link before anything goes live. No article publishes without human review.
  4. Byline & dating — every article shows its author, its reviewer, and its last-updated date.
  5. Maintenance — money articles are re-checked when rates and program rules change; outdated guidance is updated or retired.

Corrections policy

Found an error — a stale price, a broken link, a wrong number? Tell us. Verified factual errors are corrected within 3 business days, and material corrections are noted on the article. We’d rather be corrected than wrong.

Who’s behind this

Her Own Compass is written by Rachel Bennett and operated as an independent publication. Read the full story on the About page.