Editorial standards
Editorial Policy
ShouldISpend creates educational calculators and guides to help people pressure-test major spending decisions. The site is designed to make financial tradeoffs easier to see, not to replace personalized financial advice.
Last reviewed: July 2026. ShouldISpend is regularly reviewed for calculation accuracy, clear assumptions, visible ownership, working links, and uncommon financial scenarios.
What ShouldISpend Publishes
ShouldISpend publishes calculators, explainers, and decision guides about household spending, savings, debt pressure, emergency funds, rent, cars, travel, weddings, medical bills, college costs, baby costs, funeral costs, groceries, and similar financial decisions.
How Calculator Logic Is Created
Calculator logic is built around practical pressure factors: cost, take-home income, savings, debt, monthly breathing room, outside help, financing risk, emergency reserves, and whether a decision could create avoidable financial strain.
Review and Updates
Pages are reviewed for clarity, edge-case behavior, calculation errors, outdated assumptions, and whether the result explains the decision in plain language. ShouldISpend prioritizes fixes when a calculator gives a misleading result for high savings, unusually low income, high-interest debt, outside help, unstable income, or other important edge cases.
Sources and Assumptions
ShouldISpend calculators use transparent assumptions and plain-language methodology notes. When a page relies on outside figures or general financial rules, the page should explain how those figures are used and where the calculator's judgment begins.
Corrections
If an error is found, the goal is to correct it quickly and make the calculator more useful. Readers can report unclear wording, calculation issues, or broken pages through the contact page.
Author
ShouldISpend is created and edited by Dustin Baker. The site reflects practical consumer decision-making and educational planning, not individualized financial, tax, legal, medical, or investment advice.
Related Policies
Readers may also review the About page, Methodology, Disclaimer, Terms, and Privacy Policy.
Contact
To report an issue or ask about a page, visit the contact page.
Editorial purpose
Should I Spend publishes calculators and decision guides that help readers understand the cost, timing, tradeoffs, and risk of everyday spending decisions. The editorial standard is practical usefulness: a page should help a reader identify the real cost categories, understand what could change the result, and know what to verify before spending money.
The site avoids presenting calculator results as guarantees. Financial, housing, medical, legal, travel, funeral, family, and education decisions can depend on local rules, contracts, health needs, provider policies, employer benefits, lender requirements, and personal circumstances that a website cannot fully know.
Calculator quality standards
A calculator page should explain what the tool estimates, which inputs matter, what the result means, what is not included, and when a reader should slow down before acting. Pages should include plain-language examples, decision checks, common mistakes, and next steps where useful.
The site gives extra care to high-impact decisions where a bad estimate can create debt, cash-flow stress, missed bills, or a commitment the reader cannot easily reverse. Those pages should make limitations visible instead of hiding them behind the calculator.
Corrections, updates, and limitations
Should I Spend may update pages when wording is unclear, a cost category is missing, a calculator needs better examples, or a page needs stronger explanation around risk and limitations. Review dates should reflect substantive review, not cosmetic editing.
Readers can report errors or unclear calculator behavior through the contact page. Corrections are evaluated based on whether they improve the accuracy, clarity, or usefulness of the public page.
Examples of substantive page improvements
A substantive update may add missing cost categories, clarify how to interpret a result, improve examples, explain timing risk, identify when the calculator is not enough, or add safer next steps for close-call decisions. Minor grammar, formatting, or layout changes are not treated the same as a full editorial review.
How reader safety shapes the writing
The editorial approach favors caution when a decision could create recurring payments, debt pressure, missed bills, or a shortage of emergency cash. A page should not encourage a reader to treat a close result as automatic approval. When the decision is close, the writing should explain what to verify, what could go wrong, and which lower-risk alternatives may be worth comparing.
This is why many pages include limitations, red flags, and next steps in addition to the calculator itself. The math is useful, but the surrounding guidance helps the reader understand whether the estimate is stable enough to use.