1. Introduction
Life Budgets ("we", "us", "our") is committed to protecting your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains what data we collect when you use our service, how we process and store it, and the choices you have regarding your data.
By creating an account, you acknowledge that you have read this Privacy Policy and consent to the collection, processing, and storage of your data as described herein. Your consent is recorded at the time of registration.
2. Data We Collect
2.1 Information you provide
- Account data: Full name, email address, and password (hashed, never stored in plain text).
- Preferences: Life stage (single, dating, married, sandwich generation) and budgeting paradigm.
- Financial data: Budget allocations, manual transactions, savings goals, and notes you enter directly.
- Household data: Household name, member relationships, privacy level preferences, and contribution amounts.
2.2 Data from connected accounts (via Plaid)
- Bank account names, types (checking, savings, credit, investment, loan), and current balances.
- Transaction history: amounts, dates, merchant names, and Plaid-assigned categories for the last 30 days (refreshed on each sync).
- Plaid item identifiers and institution names.
Plaid access tokens are encrypted at rest. We never store your bank login credentials. Plaid's own Privacy Policy governs how Plaid handles your data during the account-linking flow.
2.3 Automatically collected data
- Server-side logs: request paths, HTTP status codes, and timestamps — retained for up to 30 days for debugging.
- Error events: stack traces and context captured when the app encounters an unexpected error.
3. How We Process Your Data
We process your data on the following legal bases:
- Performance of contract: To deliver the budgeting, transaction, goal, and household features you signed up for.
- Consent: To connect your financial accounts via Plaid and to send optional notification emails. You may withdraw consent at any time by disconnecting your accounts or deleting your account.
- Legitimate interests: To maintain service security, prevent fraud, and debug issues — balanced against your right to privacy.
Specific processing activities
- Aggregating account balances to compute net worth and available cash snapshots.
- Categorizing transactions against your budget to generate spending reports and alerts.
- Detecting recurring billing patterns from transaction history to predict upcoming bills.
- Sharing selected financial data with household members, subject to the privacy level you configure.
- Processing subscription payments via Stripe.
- Sending transactional emails (verification, invitations, notifications) via Gmail API.
4. Data Storage and Security
- All data is stored in a Supabase (PostgreSQL) database hosted on secure cloud infrastructure.
- Row-Level Security (RLS) policies ensure each user can only access their own data or data explicitly shared within their household.
- All data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest.
- Plaid access tokens are encrypted with an application-level key before storage.
- Passwords are hashed by Supabase Auth using bcrypt — we never have access to your plaintext password.
We retain your data for as long as your account remains active. Net worth snapshots are retained monthly. Server logs are purged after 30 days.
5. Data Sharing
We share your data only in the following circumstances:
- Within your household: Data marked as shared is visible to household members at the privacy level you have set (full / partial / private).
- Service providers (processors):
- Plaid — financial account connectivity.
- Stripe — subscription payment processing.
- Supabase — database and authentication infrastructure.
- Google (Gmail API) — transactional email delivery.
- Legal obligations: If required by law, court order, or to protect the rights and safety of Life Budgets or its users.
We do not sell or rent your personal or financial data to any third party.
6. Your Rights
- Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Rectification: Correct inaccurate data via Settings at any time.
- Erasure (right to be forgotten): Delete your account via Settings → Delete Account. This permanently and irreversibly deletes your profile, accounts, transactions, budgets, goals, and all associated data.
- Restriction: Disconnect your Plaid accounts at any time to stop further financial data collection.
- Portability: Export your transaction and budget data from the app.
- Withdraw consent: Delete your account at any time. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing that occurred before withdrawal.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at support@lifebudgets.com. We will respond within 30 days.
7. Cookies and Local Storage
Life Budgets uses cookies solely for authentication session management (via Supabase Auth). We do not use tracking cookies or third-party advertising cookies. Theme preferences are stored in localStorage on your device.
8. Children's Privacy
Life Budgets is not directed to children under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from minors. If you believe a minor has created an account, contact us immediately and we will delete it.
9. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy periodically. We will notify you of material changes via email or an in-app notice at least 14 days before the changes take effect. Your continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.