What this site guarantees

Standards

What is computed, what is invented, what we will not do, and what happens when we get something wrong.

The Casebook works best when you can see exactly what you are looking at. The households are fictional, and each file says so. The financial questions are realistic. The calculations are reproducible. The recommendations involve judgment. And when we get something wrong, we correct it.

These are the standards that keep those lines clear. They are listed here so a reader can hold the work to them.

Why this page exists

Case in Pointe is published without a byline. You are not being asked to trust a person, a credential or a photograph — which means the method, the math and the mistakes all have to be on the page instead.

That is a harder standard than a byline, not an easier one. A name can be asserted. Everything below can be checked.

The math

Every figure in every case file is computed by a tested program, not typed by a person and not estimated to fit a story. Totals sum. Schedules carry the interest rate they state. Percentages name the base they are taken from. When a number would be wrong, the case does not publish until it is right.

That does not make every assumption objectively correct. It means the arithmetic is reproducible from the assumptions shown — you should be able to follow the numbers without taking them on faith.

The people

Every household in the Casebook is created for the case. They are not real people with names changed or identifying details blurred. They are fictional households built to explore financial situations that real people encounter.

That gives us room to make a case detailed without turning someone else’s private finances into content. What carries the weight here is not the invention but the label: every file states what it is on its own page, and that label never gets smaller as the archive grows. If a file is ever built on anything other than an invented household, it will say so there, plainly, before you read a number.

The judgment

The numbers inform the decision. They do not make it. They can tell a household what a choice costs, what it frees up, how long it takes, or how two paths compare. They cannot decide what matters most.

Two people looking at the same numbers may reasonably choose differently, because they value flexibility, certainty, time, family, career options or risk differently. Where the method leaves room for that, the case says so instead of hiding the choice inside a calculation. A figure is evidence, not a verdict.

The assumptions

Every case rests on assumptions. Investment returns. Inflation. Interest rates. Tax treatment. Income growth. Spending. Timelines. Life continuing roughly according to plan.

Where an assumption materially affects the result, the case states it. The goal is not to pretend uncertainty can be eliminated. It is to make clear which conclusions come from known facts and which depend on what we assumed.

The limits

Case in Pointe is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, CPA firm, or law firm. Case studies are fictional unless otherwise noted and are provided for educational purposes only. The content is not individualized financial, tax, legal, or investment advice, and reading it does not create an advisory relationship.

Figures, assumptions, and illustrative rates are identified within the cases where applicable. Decisions involving your own finances should be evaluated in the context of your circumstances and, where appropriate, with a qualified professional.

The corrections

Cases can be wrong. An assumption can be entered incorrectly. A calculation can contain a defect. A methodology can improve. A source can change.

When a newer version of the engine changes a figure that has already been published, the case is reopened and corrected in place, with both versions named. A new engine never silently restates an old case.

We do not want an archive in which yesterday’s answer quietly becomes today’s answer with no indication that anything changed. Corrections are visible, not quiet.

The sources

Not every number comes from the household itself. Contribution limits, tax thresholds, interest rates, government statistics and actuarial assumptions all reach into a case from outside it. When an external fact matters to the analysis, it comes from a source that can be identified and dated.

That distinction matters, because there are two kinds of number in a case and they are traceable in two different directions.

Numbers we calculate

Trace back to the case inputs and the methodology that produced them.

Facts we rely on

Trace back to an outside source that is named and dated.

A number with neither kind of trace does not go in a case. Nothing enters on the strength of sounding plausible.

What you will not find here

There are a few lines we deliberately do not cross.

Publishing the constraints is the point of having them

Publish a figure we cannot trace to the engine or to a dated source
Pretend an assumption is a fact, or present a judgment call as though the mathematics made the choice
Present an invented case subject as a real person, or a generated image as a photograph of one
Publish anyone’s real financial details without their permission
Present educational writing as though it were individualized advice
Change a published figure without saying so

Those constraints are not separate from the work. They are part of how the work is done.

The method these standards apply to is set out in full on the Method. The files themselves are in the Casebook.