The site

Privacy and contact

A site that teaches you to read the small print should have small print worth reading. Here is ours, in the same plain language as everything else: what we collect (almost nothing), what we would tell you before that changed, and how to reach us.

The short version

This site has no accounts, no logins and no newsletters, and sets no tracking cookies of its own. We do not collect, store or sell personal information. Our hosting provider keeps standard technical logs to run the service. Advertising from Google pays for the site: you are asked in a banner before any advertising cookie is set, and because this site is written for teenagers, ad personalisation is switched off on every ad request we make.

What we collect

From you, directly: nothing. There is nothing to sign up for, nothing to fill in, and reading this site requires no personal information of any kind.

Technical basics, via our host. The site is served by Vercel, a hosting company, which like effectively all web hosts processes standard technical data (such as IP addresses) in server logs to deliver pages and keep the service secure. We do not use this data to identify or profile anyone. Vercel's own privacy policy covers its processing, on its website.

Fonts. Pages load one display font from Google Fonts, which means your browser requests a file from Google's servers when a page loads, as it does on a large share of the web. If that matters to you, the site remains fully readable with fonts blocked.

External links. Our receipts boxes link to sources: the Bank of England, ONS, lenders' own pages, YouTube. Once you click through, those sites' own privacy rules apply, not ours. Links to sources are part of our method and never sponsored.

What we do not do

No tracking cookies of our own. No selling or sharing of personal data. No newsletters or marketing emails (there is nothing to subscribe to yet; if a newsletter ever launches it will be opt-in and this page will say so). No accounts, no profiles, and no personalisation of what you read: every visitor gets exactly the same site. Ad personalisation is a separate thing, and it is switched off too. See below.

Advertising: what it is, and what we switched off

This site is free and it costs money to run. Ordinary advertising from Google pays for it. That is the entire business model, and here is all of it, in plain sight.

Who serves the ads. Google, through its AdSense service. To choose and show an advert, Google may process technical information such as your IP address, your device and browser, and which page you are reading. Google publishes its own account of how it uses data on partner sites at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites; it is worth ten minutes of your life, and it is exactly the kind of document this site exists to get you reading.

You get asked first. Before any advertising cookie is set, a consent banner appears. It is Google's own consent tool, certified under the industry framework that the UK and EU rules are built around. Say yes and you may see personalised ads. Say no and you see non-personalised ads instead: the site works identically, every page stays free, and nothing is withheld for refusing. You can change your answer later from the same banner.

The part we care most about

Ad personalisation is switched off on every ad request this site makes. This site is written for people aged roughly 13 to 17, so every ad slot carries a teen treatment tag. Open the page source and look for data-tag-for-age-treatment="2": it is on every slot, on every page. Under Google's own rules that tag turns off ads personalisation and restricts sensitive categories including alcohol, gambling, dating and prescription medicines.

It earns us less. A site that teaches teenagers how targeting works cannot then let itself be used to target them.

Our ads policy, in public

Blocked outright in the advertising controls: payday loans and other high-cost short-term credit, debt management and debt consolidation selling, gambling and betting, get-rich-quick and "make money fast" schemes, crypto promotions, dating, and alcohol.

Never, at any price: bank sponsorships, paid product placement, affiliate links to credit products, or an advertiser seeing a page before you do. No advertiser has influenced a word here and none ever will. If you see an advert on this site that belongs on that blocked list, tell us: we will block it the same day, and like any correction it gets fixed fastest of all.

Contact

Reach the site

Email: hello@moneyoutofnothing.com

Especially welcome: corrections with sources (they get fixed fastest of all), missing glossary words, questions you wish a page answered, and teachers interested in the classroom pack. We read everything; a small site cannot promise to answer everything.

Questions people ask

Do you use cookies?

The site sets no tracking cookies of its own. Google's advertising can set cookies, but only after the consent banner has asked you and you have said yes. Say no and you still get the whole site, with non-personalised ads instead. Ad personalisation is switched off here either way, because the site is written for teenagers.

I am 15. Am I being tracked here?

Not by us: we collect nothing about you at all. And every ad request this site makes is tagged for teen treatment, which under Google's own rules switches off ads personalisation and restricts categories like gambling, alcohol and dating. Say no to the consent banner and no advertising cookie is set either. You can check all of this yourself in the page source, which is rather the point of this whole website.

Is this site safe for under 18s?

It is written for them. No accounts, no data collection by us, no products, no chat, nothing to buy, ad personalisation switched off, and every page built to pass the over-the-shoulder parent test. Debt pages signpost free, charity-run help. Parents and teachers are actively invited to read along: see the about page.

Can I reuse or quote your pages?

Share links freely and quote with credit: that is what the site is for. For anything bigger, a school pack, a reprint, a translation, email us; the answer will usually be an enthusiastic yes.

Who runs this site?

The site is run independently and anonymously in the UK, out of pocket, with no sponsor or institution behind it: the full story is on the about page, and the method the site holds itself to is on the receipts page.