BudgetHaven Privacy Statement

What we collect, and why

BudgetHaven does not connect to your bank today. You add activity yourself: type it in, import a CSV or OFX file that you download from your bank (the file is read in your browser), or scan a receipt. We never ask for or store your online banking username or password.

We plan to offer optional bank sync as part of a Premium plan, through a trusted bank-connection provider. It will be opt-in: nothing connects to your bank unless you choose it, and you can disconnect anytime. Before bank sync is available, we'll name the provider here and explain what it shares with BudgetHaven.

If you photograph a receipt, the image is sent to Amazon Textract inside BudgetHaven's AWS account to suggest the merchant, date, and total. The image is processed in memory and not stored. You review and confirm the suggested transaction before it is saved.

If you use voice entry, your recording (up to 15 seconds) is sent to Amazon Transcribe inside BudgetHaven's AWS account to turn it into text. The audio is processed in memory and not stored. You review what it heard before anything is saved. Voice entry has a daily limit.

We collect: your email (sign-in, recovery), your password (hashed, never plain text), the budget data you enter, basic device/session info for "remember this device," your account status (when you joined and whether you're one of our first 100 early adopters), whether you joined the bank sync waitlist, your answer confirming you're 18 or older and when you gave it, and if you donate or subscribe, Stripe handles payment entirely, we never see your card number. When you visit the site, our web host also logs your IP address for 90 days (see Visit logs below). On our public pages, Google Analytics also counts visits (see Site analytics below).

We do not sell, rent, or share your data with advertisers, data brokers, or anyone else for marketing, ever.

How your data is stored and protected

Stored on AWS, encrypted in transit and at rest. Sign-in via AWS Cognito; your password is never stored in readable form. As the person who built and runs BudgetHaven, I want to say this plainly: I will never look through your budget, your balances, or your spending, out of simple respect, it's your business, not mine. Support requests get handled by looking only at what's needed to fix the problem, nothing more.

How BudgetHaven makes money

Absolutely no ads, ever. We will never show you advertising or sell your data so someone else can. Instead: donations (optional, always), and a subscription for people who join after our first 100 (a 60-day free trial of Basic, then a small monthly, quarterly, or yearly fee). A Premium plan with optional bank sync is coming later. Early adopters, the first 100 people to start their own BudgetHaven, get Basic free for as long as BudgetHaven exists, and bank sync at a reduced early adopter price. If you became an early adopter before October 1, 2026, you keep the original promise: every feature for your own account, including future ones like bank sync, free (early adopter details). Early adopters can share their budget with one partner or family member free; sharing with more people needs a Family plan. Donations are always welcome, never required. No affiliate deals, no referral partnerships, no ads of any kind.

Sharing your account

You can invite others (a spouse, a teen, a parent, a grandparent) with full, view-only, or suggest-changes access. Everyone you invite must be 13 or older. You control exactly what they see, starting with nothing, and can remove access anytime.

Children

BudgetHaven is for people managing their own money. Account owners must be 18 or older, and invited family members must be 13 or older. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email us and we'll delete it.

Visit logs

To tell real visitors apart from my own testing, BudgetHaven's web host (Amazon CloudFront) keeps standard access logs for the site. Each entry records the page requested, the time, your IP address, and your browser and device type. Logs never include cookies, anything you type, or your budget data.

The logs sit in a private, encrypted storage bucket that only BudgetHaven can read, are used only to count visits, and are deleted automatically after 90 days. They are never sold, shared, or combined with your account. These logs set no cookies and build no visitor profiles. There are no advertising pixels anywhere on BudgetHaven.

Site analytics

We use Google Analytics to learn how people find BudgetHaven and which public pages help them. It runs only on our public pages: the home and sign-in page, the demo, the early adopter details, the privacy, security, and terms pages, and the BudgetHaven Blog. It never runs inside the signed-in app. Your budget, balances, amounts, and names are never sent to Google.

Google Analytics collects the public pages you visit, your approximate location (city or region), your device, browser, and screen size, and how you found the site, such as a search or a link. Google uses your IP address to estimate the location and says it doesn't store the address. We send each page's address without sign-in codes, invite links, or anything else after a "?" or "#", except campaign tags (like utm_source or utm_campaign) that tell us which ad or link brought you here. Those tags never include anything about you personally. We use them only to count which ads and links work, and we never add advertising pixels or share this with advertisers.

It sets two cookies on mybudgethaven.com, named _ga and _ga_PVMX3KGSGS, so it can tell a new visitor from a returning one. They expire 13 months after your last visit. Google's advertising features are off: no Google signals, no ad personalization, and no user ID. We never send Google anything about your money or who you are.

We also count a few steps, so we can tell which buttons, posts, and ads help people: opening the demo, tapping "Create your free account" or "See a sample paycheck plan" on the home page, using the link at the end of a blog post, and creating an account. These counts carry no personal details. They never include your email address, your name, or anything you type. When you create an account, we count it once, then Google Analytics turns off on that device before the app opens.

On the demo, we count the visit, then stop as soon as you start using the sample budget. Once anyone signs in on a device, Google Analytics stays off on that device from then on, even on public pages. We look only at totals and trends, like how many people tried the demo.

To opt out, use the switch below. It's saved in this browser only. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, Google Analytics never loads. You can also install Google's opt-out browser add-on.

Your rights

See your data in the app, download a JSON archive and transaction CSV from Settings, or close your account anytime. Closing blocks access right away. For 35 days you can sign back in and reactivate your account with everything intact, or choose to delete everything immediately. After 35 days, your budget data is permanently deleted and can't be recovered. Deleted data also ages out of our encrypted backups within 35 days. We keep an anonymous count of how many people have ever joined, and one more thing: a scrambled code made from your email address, not the address itself. It can't be turned back into your email, and we use it only so the same inbox can't claim a second free early adopter spot.

Questions and updates

Reach us at support@mybudgethaven.com. Any meaningful policy change gets posted here with a new date, never a quiet change.