Privacy

What we collect — and when

Using the calculator on independence.money collects nothing. Your numbers are calculated in your browser and never leave your device.

If you choose to save your plan by email, we store the following with our email platform, Kit (ConvertKit):

• Your email address
• Your chosen FI path (e.g. Coast FI, Full Independence)
• Your projected timeline in years
• A random restore passphrase generated at signup
• An encrypted copy of your financial inputs (income, expenses, savings, investments, age) — see the restore section below for how this works
• The date you signed up

We do not collect your name. We do not store unencrypted financial inputs beyond the fields listed above.

How the restore feature works

When you submit your email, your browser generates a random passphrase for you (e.g. coral-lamp-seven-pine) and sends it together with your financial inputs to independence.money’s server over HTTPS. The server combines the passphrase with a secret held only in our own deployment environment to encrypt your inputs, then returns the encrypted blob. The plaintext is never written to any database or log.

Recovering your inputs later requires all three of the following: your passphrase, the encrypted blob held by Kit, and our server-side secret. None of these three systems alone can recover your data:

• Kit holds the encrypted blob and your passphrase (so we can email the passphrase to you), but not the server-side secret. Kit alone cannot decrypt.
• independence.money’s server holds the secret, but not the encrypted blob or your passphrase. The server alone cannot decrypt any user’s snapshot.
• You hold the passphrase (in your inbox), but without the encrypted blob from Kit and the server-side secret, it cannot decrypt anything on its own.

When you follow a check-in link and enter your passphrase, your browser sends the passphrase and the encrypted blob to independence.money’s server, which decrypts them in memory using the server-side secret and returns your inputs to your browser over HTTPS. The plaintext is never written to any database or log.

If you would rather not store an encrypted copy with Kit, skip the email signup. The calculator works fully without it.

Why we collect it

Your email address is used to send your plan summary and monthly check-in emails. Your path and timeline are used to personalise those emails. The encrypted snapshot exists solely to power the restore feature. We do not sell your data or share it with third parties for advertising.

Where it is stored

All subscriber data is stored with Kit (ConvertKit), our email platform. Kit is GDPR-compliant and operates under a data processing agreement. You can review Kit’s privacy policy at kit.com/privacy.

independence.money has no database of its own. No subscriber data is stored outside of Kit.

How to unsubscribe or delete your data

Every email includes an unsubscribe link. Clicking it removes you from all future emails immediately.

To request deletion of your subscriber record and all associated data, email privacy@independence.money from the address you used to sign up. We will confirm deletion within 30 days.

Cookies and analytics

We do not use tracking cookies, third-party analytics, or any form of personal data collection for analytics purposes at this time.

In the future, we may introduce privacy-first, cookieless, aggregate analytics to understand how the site is used. If we do, it will collect no personal data, set no cookies, and never share information with advertisers. We will update this section before any such change goes live.