Financial Guidance Media
SmartAsset
Last updated:
Nov 15, 2024
Provided by
SmartAsset Advisors, LLC
Life Admin Area
Personal finance
SmartAsset is a financial media platform that aims to educate people on how to find certain kinds of financial products, but focuses on matching people with financial advisors, specifically.Ā In service of that, they help users answer a number of financial questions, through up-to-date information, stats, tools, calculators, and matchmaking quizzes.
You can find a number of financial information and media companies out there, but many of them orient users toward financial products that aren't like to save you time, effort, or money in the long-run. SmartAsset provides a more discerning approach to what they feature and promote.
Throughout life, we all face the need for financial services, which require research before choosing.Ā Relationships like a financial advisor are considered choices that you don't want to get wrong, given the cost.Ā SmartAsset can be a great tool for not only finding options but understanding the key considerations for making a great choice.
The danger with consuming any financial media is that you also face distractions that only increase the admin work of personal finance, like gaming the stock market or taking on unnecessary debt. That's part of why we've reviewed SmartAsset ā the site generally operates as a strong, free research tool, with less focus on selling you toward certain financial decisions.
Television, websites, and influencers that deliver unlicensed, unpersonalized financial news and advice, which often influences people's personal financial decisionsāoften negatively. Financial media ranges from CNBC to Nerdwallet and Tiktok influencers.
Media sites (Wayshaping included) often support themselves financially by offering users links to go and buy products and services. Some media sites let this revenue drive their content decisions, where others have controls in place to limit the conflict of interest.
SmartAsset was founded in 2012, during the heyday of media companies building their following by showing up in Google Search.Ā Since SmartAsset was built to help people answer basic financial questions and find financial advisors, they were able to amass millions of visitors per month (according to SmartAsset itself, 75 million per month in 2021) by providing extremely relevant information to the world wide web.
As Google and generative AIĀ tools provide answers without clicks to sites like SmartAsset, that traffic is changing, but the quality of content isn't. What SmartAsset does well is provide context and a clear set of options when you're searching for financial tools to solve your problems.
Financial media companies are valuable tools, but dangerous ones, as they can often lead people toward buying products or making financial decisions that aren't in their best interest. SmartAsset's key strengths that led to our review are...
NerdWallet, Inc. is a financial services company that offers online resources to assist consumers in making informed personal finance decisions. Its key offerings include comparison tools for credit cards, mortgages, personal loans, insurance, and other financial products, alongside editorial content aimed at consumer education.
Also reviewed on Wayshaping ->Bankrate is an independent publisher of financial information with broad coverage of banking, insurance, and credit cards. As its name implies, its a reliable resource for finding current interest rates for savings accounts and CDs.
Also reviewed on Wayshaping ->Dotdash Meredith publishes a number of informational media sites with a focus on revenue via affiliate marketing links. Their financial properties include Investopedia, which often promotes a variety of financial products.
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