PayoffPath is free to read. This page explains how it is paid for, and what that does and does not buy.
Advertising
This site is built to carry display advertising from Google AdSense. The AdSense code is installed on the article pages and the slots an advertisement would fill are defined, but no advertisement is being shown today: until Google serves one, those slots stay empty. This page describes how the advertising works when it appears rather than waiting for it to appear. When there is an ad, it is sold and placed by Google and the vendors that participate through it; we do not choose which advertisers appear, and their appearance here is not an endorsement.
Advertising and measurement technologies only store or read anything on your device if you allow it in the cookie banner. For readers in the EEA and the UK, personalised advertising additionally requires a consent platform certified under the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework. That platform is already installed on this site and registered under the Framework, but its message is not yet being displayed: it is waiting on Google to activate it. Until that message appears no consent is collected from anyone, every reader is left in the denied state, and readers in those countries are shown non-personalised advertising only.
What advertising does not buy
- No advertiser sees an article before it is published.
- No advertiser can change, soften or remove a conclusion.
- No topic is chosen, dropped or ranked because of what it pays.
Where advertising will never appear
Some articles are excluded from advertising on purpose, because monetising them would be indecent. Today that covers the material aimed at people in acute financial crisis: on the guide on being sued for a debt and the guide on stopping a wage garnishment, the ad script does not load at all. Material about medical debt in serious illness will carry the same exclusion when it is published.
Affiliate links
If we ever earn a commission on a link, that link will be marked at the point of use, on that page, in plain language — not buried in a footer. We currently carry none.