About Mint Wharf
A small, independent publication that explains UK household money by showing the arithmetic.
A mint is where money gets made, and a wharf is where goods are unloaded and counted. We liked the idea of a place where money gets counted out in the open, so that is what we try to do here.
What we publish
Guides to the basics of running a UK household: budgets, bills, saving, tax and pensions. Each one answers a question people really ask, gives the answer near the top, and then shows how it was reached. If a number appears, it has a tax year or a date next to it, and a link to where it came from.
Who writes it
The site is written and edited by the Mint Wharf editors. We don't list named experts, because we don't have a panel of them, and we won't pretend to. We are not financial advisers. Mint Wharf is not a bank, a lender or a broker, and it does not offer regulated advice or sell financial products.
What this site is not
Nothing here is a personal recommendation. A guide can show you how tax relief on a pension works, but it can't tell you how much you should pay in, because it knows nothing about your life. For that, look to a regulated financial adviser, a qualified tax adviser, or free services such as Citizens Advice.
How we check things
We work from primary sources where we can: GOV.UK, HMRC, Ofgem, The Pensions Regulator, the FSCS and Citizens Advice. We open each page we cite. Worked examples use invented households and are labelled as such. Rates and rules change, and we can get things wrong, so please check a current figure at its source before relying on it. If you spot a mistake, write to [email protected] and we'll look at it.
Guest articles
We also publish articles from outside contributors, under the rules on our write-for-us page. Contributed articles are named as such, and any commercial interest has to be disclosed.
Image credits
These images are used under Creative Commons licences. All were cropped and resized by us, and the BY-SA crops are shared under the same licence.
- Cranes on Prince's Wharf, Bristol, by ponponjo. CC BY-SA 2.0. Source.
- Coins in a jar, by Free Images. CC BY 2.0. Source.
- Post Office Savings Bank passbook, by Wainuiomartian. CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.
Other photos are CC0 or public domain, and are credited under each image.