Privacy policy

Last updated October 8, 2026

Chump Change is a personal finance app that you use with a server run by someone you know (the “operator”), not a company that mines your data. This policy says what the app and server keep, who else sees any of it, and how to remove it. Questions go to the person who invited you.

The short version

• Your data is used only to show you your own finances. There is no advertising, no tracking, no analytics and no selling or renting of data.
• Every account is kept apart from every other, including from the administrator's. Administrators can invite, disable and remove accounts, but there is no screen or API that shows them your balances or transactions.
• You can download or permanently delete everything yourself, in the app (Account → Delete account) or on the website (Settings → Privacy).

What is stored

• Your sign-in: your email address, a one-way hash of your password (never the password itself), your authenticator secret (encrypted), recovery codes (hashed), and the devices and browsers signed in (name, approximate address, last use).
• Your finances, if you connect banks: the institutions you link, account names and balances, transactions (date, amount, vendor and description), and investment holdings and trades. These come from your banks through Plaid.
• What you add: categories, budgets, owners, rules, manually entered assets and loans, and which findings you dismissed.
• Notifications: if you turn them on, your phone's push-notification token, and a record of which alerts were already sent so each is sent once.
• Plaid credentials: the Plaid keys you enter and the access tokens Plaid issues for your banks are encrypted before they are stored. Your bank passwords are never seen or stored by Chump Change; you type them into Plaid's own sign-in window.

The app on your iPhone keeps a sign-in token in the iOS Keychain and a few settings (server address, lock preference). It does not collect location, contacts, photos, advertising identifiers or usage analytics.

Who else receives data

• Plaid (plaid.com) connects to your bank when you link it and returns your accounts and transactions. Plaid's own privacy policy applies to that connection. Deleting your account here disconnects your banks at Plaid.
• Anthropic may be sent a vendor name, an amount and a date to suggest a category for a transaction, if the operator has turned that on. Balances, account numbers and your identity are never sent.
• Apple delivers push notifications. If you turn them on, Apple sees the notification text (for example a bill's name and due date) on its way to your phone.

Nothing is shared for marketing, and no data is sold. Data may be disclosed if the law requires the operator to.

Security

Connections use HTTPS. Sign-in needs a password plus an authenticator code, and the app can additionally be locked with Face ID or your passcode. The database refuses to link one account's records to another's. Secrets are encrypted at rest. No system is perfectly secure, and the operator, who runs the server, is responsible for keeping it updated and its backups private.

How long data is kept, and deleting it

Your data is kept while your account exists. You can delete your account at any time in the app (Account → Delete account) or on the website (Settings → Privacy); this removes your account and everything in it permanently and disconnects your banks at Plaid. You can also download a copy of your data from the website first (Settings → Privacy → Download my data). The operator keeps periodic database backups; a deleted account disappears from them as old backups are replaced (the newest 14 are kept). If you cannot use the app, ask the operator to delete your account.

Disconnecting a single bank, or removing the app from your phone, does not by itself delete your account; use the steps above for that.

Children

Chump Change is not intended for anyone under 13, and accounts are created only by invitation.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date above changes and the app and website show the new version.

Contact

Questions go to the person who invited you. For privacy questions or deletion requests, contact the operator of the server you sign in to.