Personal finance pages go out of date quietly: a tax band is frozen or changed on 6 April, a benefit rate goes up, a bank changes its fees. This page explains how PocketWise keeps its figures and rules tied to their sources, and how you can check them yourself.
Primary sources first
Figures and rules come from the organisation that sets them: HMRC and GOV.UK for tax, the Department for Work and Pensions for benefits and the State Pension, legislation.gov.uk for the law itself, the Bank of England for Bank Rate and interest rate statistics, the Office for National Statistics for earnings and prices, the FSCS for deposit protection, and Revenue Scotland and the Welsh Government for Scottish and Welsh property taxes. Where a figure comes from a company (a bank’s fee, a savings account’s rules), we use the company’s own published page or document.
Summaries by search engines and AI tools are not treated as sources. Before a figure is used, the exact wording is found on the source page itself.
Each figure is stored once
Numbers used on more than one page (tax bands, benefit rates, allowances, fees) are stored once in a data file, along with the source they came from and the date they were last checked. Pages display the stored value, so an update to the data file changes every page that uses it, and two pages can’t show different values for the same figure. Rules written in words, such as who can open a Lifetime ISA or what the FSCS protects, are stored the same way, with the source’s own wording on record.
The Sources list at the end of a page includes the sources behind the stored figures and rules that page uses, with the dates they were last checked.
Sentence-by-sentence checks
We are reviewing the site one topic at a time. In a review, every factual sentence on every page in the topic is listed and given a verdict with its source: correct, corrected, or removed when it can’t be confirmed. Calculators are tested against worked examples calculated by hand, table totals are recalculated, and cited links are fetched to confirm they still load and still say what the page says they do. A second check, by a reviewer who hasn’t seen the first review, then goes over a sample of the most important claims against the sources.
When an error turns up, we search the whole site for the same mistake, since the same fact often appears on several pages.
Scheduled updates
Each data file has a date by which it must be checked again, based on how often its source changes: monthly for savings and mortgage rate statistics and house prices, every three months for bank fees and limits, and around the Autumn Budget and again after 6 April for tax rates, benefit rates and the State Pension. Pages are also tested against upcoming dates, including the start of the new tax year on 6 April, so they don’t show last year’s figures as current.
Corrections
If you find something wrong or out of date, please let us know. We check the source, correct the page, and look for the same error elsewhere on the site. Significant corrections are listed on our corrections page.
PocketWise provides general information, not personal financial advice. Rules have conditions and exceptions, so for a decision that depends on your situation it can help to confirm the details with the source or a regulated adviser.