Our general policy on data retention is retaining only as much as needed and only for long as is required to provide a user with our services - and anyone can have their data fully deleted anytime by emailing us! We currently don't have a function yet to allow people to download their data, but it's a great idea and we're happy to prioritize it if there's demand!
Good question! That bit of legalese just says we can't recommend specific stocks (and we don't). We can, however, recommend tax strategies, employer benefit optimizations, general investment allocations, credit cards, savings accounts, loans, etc.
Great question! Basically we take where your finances currently are and calculate where they would be around retirement if you made no changes vs. where they would be if you applied our optimizations.
The value comes from: (1) tax advantages, (2) free money from employer benefits, (3) investment compounding, (4) increased earnings, and (5) fee savings.
We’re generally assuming our recommendations are implemented for 5 years and tax-advantaged retirement and health savings recommendations are totally invested until retirement at the age of 67.
For debt stuff, we’re assuming recommendations are implemented until the debt is paid off.
For everything else - switching credit cards etc - we’re assuming the change is implemented for 5 years.
100% it's hard to do. We're looking at Wirecutter as a great example of a company that does this well.
We want to remove the barrier of entry for everyone to get access to financial optimization and we think this is the best way we can.
We're really committed to providing the best recommendations regardless of commission and we've love to prove it to you if you'd be up for trying us out!
Re: surpises: I think the #1 thing is that we can find optimizations for EVERYONE. Like even people who think they've got everything in place, we can find significant tweaks/improvements.
It's the difference between keeping it all in your head vs. having a database of all the best financial products out there applied to your situation.
Re: friends - just send them over to us! The magic really happens when we can get a complete picture of someone (which doesn't take too long - the form is about 15 mins), that way we're giving them truly the best recommendations.
For example, people have come to us saying, "Where should I invest?" not understanding that they're in high-interest debt and should really focus on getting out of debt vs. trying to figure out what crypto platform to use.
Thanks for the compliment - so glad we hit the mark!
This is exactly the direction we're taking the product - not just advice but full-on implementation and management - the control panel for your financial life.
For example, if there a credit card that's better for you based on your spending patterns we'll alert you and let you switch over and link in one click.