Built from the guides, not maintained separately
This index reads the critical review out of each published guide at load time. It cannot drift out of sync with the articles, because there is no second copy to fall behind.
Reference work
The Myth Audit
Standard financial advice, and exactly where each piece stops being true. Every entry here is drawn from the critical review inside one of our guides — the claim as people actually repeat it, the mechanism by which it fails, and the narrower conditions under which it still holds.
Reading the published guides and collecting every audited claim. This happens in your browser — no server, no tracking.
How to read this
What a “failure mode” means
Almost none of the advice below is simply wrong. Most of it was true somewhere, for someone, under conditions that were never stated. The failure mode names the reason it travels badly.
- Vendor-biased. The advice is produced by a party who profits when you follow it. Not automatically false — but the burden of proof shifts.
- Mis-scoped. True in one country, tax regime or account type, then repeated as though it were universal. The single most common failure in consumer finance writing.
- Outdated. Correct under earlier rules, rates or thresholds, and repeated unchanged after they moved.
- Survivorship. Built on the visible winners. The people for whom it did not work are missing from the sample.
- Overstated. Directionally right, stated far more strongly than the evidence supports. Usually the most useful category, because the underlying idea is worth keeping.
We audit ourselves too
Every critical review closes by naming a real weakness in our own page. Follow any entry back to its source and you will find that self-critique at the bottom.
Editorial policyThe limits of the audit itself
Claims are grouped by failure mode using the wording of our own analysis, so the labels reflect our judgement rather than an external standard. Treat them as a way to navigate, not as a verdict handed down.