How this site makes money, and how it never will

Here is every way The Vetted Senior earns money, every way it refuses to, and why the structure is built the way it is.

Start with the refusals, because they define us.

No business can pay to be in our directory. Ever.

There is no fee to be listed, no fee to be featured, no fee to appear higher in a category, and no fee to make a bad review disappear. Providers cannot buy their way in, and they cannot buy their way back in after being removed. Inclusion in our directory is earned by passing our vetting process and keeping standards up between reviews. That is the only currency accepted here.

This matters because it is not how this industry usually works. The largest senior care referral services in North America are paid by the facilities and agencies they recommend, often a substantial percentage of the first month's fees. Many well-known "directories" are, by their own fine print, paid advertising. We built The Vetted Senior specifically as the opposite of that model. If we ever compromise this rule, we would deserve to lose your trust completely, and we would.

We do not run advertising.

No banner ads, no sponsored posts, no "presented by" content. Nothing on this site is here because someone paid for your attention.

Now, the honest part. This site does cost money to run, and the vetting work takes real time. Here is how we pay for it.

1. Affiliate commissions on some products and services

Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, the company pays us a commission. It costs you nothing extra, and often nothing at all changes about your price.

Here is our rule, and it is absolute: commissions never influence what we recommend, how we rank anything, or whether a provider passes vetting. We decide what to recommend first, based on our research and standards. Then, and only then, we check whether an affiliate program exists for it. If we recommend something with no affiliate program, we recommend it anyway and earn nothing, and this happens regularly. If a company with a generous affiliate program fails our standards, it does not appear here, full stop.

Every page that contains affiliate links says so at the top of the page, not hidden at the bottom. You will never have to guess.

2. The founder is a licensed mortgage agent. Here is exactly what that means.

The Vetted Senior was founded by Ragini Domenichini, who is a licensed mortgage agent in Ontario operating under BRX Mortgage Inc. (FSRA licence #13549). Some content on this site discusses paying for care, and home equity, including reverse mortgages, is genuinely one of the tools some families use. When Ragini arranges a mortgage for a client, she earns compensation through BRX Mortgage Inc., the way any licensed mortgage professional does.

You should hold this site to a hard standard on that point, so here is the standard we hold ourselves to:

• a. Wherever mortgage products appear on this site, they are presented as one option among several. Government programs, tax credits, insurance, family arrangements, and selling or downsizing are always presented alongside them, and we are direct about situations where a mortgage is the wrong choice. Home equity is a serious tool with real costs, and it deserves the same unsentimental scrutiny we apply to everything else.
• b. Mortgage content never affects the directory. Providers are not vetted differently, ranked differently, or treated differently based on anything related to the mortgage practice.
• c. This relationship is disclosed on every page where mortgage products are discussed, not only here.
• d. Nobody at The Vetted Senior will ever contact you about a mortgage unless you ask. Reading our guides puts you on no list and triggers no sales call.

We could have hidden this connection behind a numbered company and a different name. We disclosed it instead, prominently, because we think a business whose financial incentives are fully visible is more trustworthy than one that pretends to have none. Every business has to make money somehow. The only real question is whether they will tell you how. We just did.

3. In the future: provider audit fees

As the directory grows, we expect to charge listed providers an annual fee that covers the cost of their verification and re-review, the way certification bodies in other industries do. If and when we introduce this, three things will remain true: paying the fee will never guarantee passing the audit, the fee will never affect ranking or presentation order, and failed audits will result in removal regardless of any fee paid. We are telling you about this before it exists because that is the kind of site this is.

What we do with your information

If you give us your email address, we use it to send you what you asked for and our newsletter, which you can leave with one click. We do not sell, rent, or trade your information. When we check references during provider vetting, we collect that information with consent and use it only for vetting decisions.

A closing thought

We named this page honestly because we are proud of the model, not embarrassed by it. The test of any recommendation service is simple: would they tell you the same thing if there were no money in it? On this site, the recommendations come first and the money is checked afterward, the directory cannot be bought, and the founder's own business interests are printed in plain language where everyone can see them. If you ever find anything on this site that does not live up to this page, write to us. This page is the contract.

Last updated: July 2026. We update this page whenever anything about how we earn money changes, and we date every change.