First Time Adulting Practical guides for your first years on your own

Editorial Standards

This page describes how the site is written. It exists so you can check whether it is being followed.

Sourcing

Every number that appears as a fact traces to a primary source, and the link is on the page. Tax material points at the IRS. Consumer credit material points at the CFPB or the FTC. Employment basics point at the Department of Labor or the agency that actually publishes the rule.

Where a live figure has not been verified for this build, the page says so and tells you where to look, instead of inventing an IRS or DOL number.

Second-hand statistics do not get printed. If a figure is quoted by one site citing another, it stays off until the original is read.

Dating

Every article carries a last checked date. It means someone reviewed the page on that date, not that a word was changed for its own sake.

Tax figures must name their tax year in the sentence once verified figures are added.

Precision about what varies

  • State law varies on landlord-tenant rules, car registration, and some employment details. Federal pages are a floor or a starting point, not the whole answer.
  • Institutions vary. No page here says what a bank, employer, landlord, or dealer will do. It says what to ask and what to read.

The connection to the books

The person who writes this site, Derek Holt, also writes new-adult life-skills books, and some pages link to them. Three rules govern that:

  1. Every page answers its own question in full. Nothing is held back to make a book necessary.
  2. The connection is stated wherever a book appears, not just in a footer.
  3. No review markup, no star ratings, no invented testimonials.

If a link ever earns a commission, it is marked as a paid link at the link itself and disclosed on the page, per the FTC’s endorsement guides.

Corrections

Errors get fixed and the last-checked date moves. Where a correction changes the substance of what a page told you, a note stays on the page. Found something wrong? Send it over.

Use of AI

Drafting, research assistance and formatting on this site may involve AI tools. Factual claims are supposed to be checked against linked primary sources before they are treated as verified. Where a source could not be verified, the page says that rather than filling the gap with a plausible number.