DISCLOSURE
Affiliate disclosure
When a page on Soanova contains an affiliate link, that page tells you so at the top, in a visible line reading This post contains affiliate links. You never pay more because of it, and the rate or price you get is identical to the one you would get by typing the address in yourself.
This page explains how those links work, how you will know when one is there, and what it does and does not change about what gets recommended here. That last part is the one worth reading.
What an affiliate link is
An affiliate link is a normal link with a tracking code attached. If you click one and go on to open an account or buy something, the company pays me a small referral fee. It never costs you anything extra. The company pays it out of its own marketing budget, not out of your rate.
The tracking usually works through a cookie your browser stores when you click, which is how the company knows the visit came from here. If you clear your cookies, or you click and come back a month later, the link often stops being attributed to me. That is normal and it does not affect you either way.
How you will know
The disclosure line appears automatically on any article carrying a paid link, and it does not appear on articles that do not carry one, so its presence is always accurate rather than a blanket notice pasted everywhere. This is what the US Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides require, and it is the standard I write to.
As of September 2026, no page on this site carries an affiliate link yet, which is why you will not currently find that line anywhere. I would rather it be absent and true than present and decorative. When it changes, the line appears by itself on the pages it applies to, and this paragraph goes.
How it affects what I publish
A product does not get recommended because it pays. Where two things would genuinely serve you equally well and one of them pays me, I will take the one that pays, and I think that is a fair trade for writing that stays free. But where the one that pays is worse for you on the thing the article is actually about, it does not get the recommendation. It gets named accurately, flaws included, and something else gets recommended instead.
There are already banks and tools recommended across this site that pay me nothing at all, and they are there because they were the right answer.
Every rate, fee and account term I quote is checked against the provider’s own published page, and carries the date I read it, because these things change quietly and a stale number is how people end up somewhere they did not expect.
Not financial advice
Soanova publishes general educational content for a US audience. It is not individualized financial, tax, or legal advice, I am not a financial advisor, and Soanova is not a registered investment adviser. For anything with tax or legal consequences, talk to a licensed professional who can see your whole picture.
Questions about any of this are welcome. The contact page reaches me directly.