Privacy Policy

This section is a plain-language overview. The rest of the policy is the authoritative version.

• Your financial information is saved on your device. For signed-in accounts, it also syncs automatically to our server when cross-device sync is configured and available. There is currently no user-facing sync-off switch.
• We never connect to your bank. Every financial figure in Ascendya is one you typed in.
• We do not sell or share your personal information, and we do not run advertising.
• We do not run a third-party analytics or tracking product. There are no advertising or analytics cookies.
• No feature sends your information to an artificial-intelligence provider.
• Afford It processes what you describe on your own device. Your problem description never reaches our servers.
• You can export your data, erase it from your device, delete any server copy, and delete your account.

This policy explains how Ascendya Finance ("Ascendya," "we," "us") handles information when you use our website and application. It applies to everything within the product and to the account system that supports it.

It does not apply to third-party websites or organizations you reach by following a link from Ascendya — including assistance programs, nonprofits, government agencies, and businesses surfaced by Afford It. Once you leave, that organization's own privacy policy governs.

The legal entity operating Ascendya, and its business address, are not yet established and are therefore not stated here. They must be added before this policy is relied on.

Account information

When you create an account, our identity provider Clerk collects your email address and the credentials for your chosen sign-in method, and may collect a name or profile image if you supply one or if you sign in through a third-party provider. Clerk assigns your account a unique identifier, which Ascendya uses to keep your data separate from every other user's. We never receive or store your password.

Financial information you enter

This is the most sensitive category Ascendya handles, and all of it comes directly from you. Depending on which features you use, it can include:

• Income: paycheck amounts, your pay schedule (weekly, biweekly, or monthly), and a history of the paychecks you have logged.
• Bills and obligations: each bill's name, amount, due day, frequency, category, reminder settings, and any notes you add.
• Spending: unexpected or one-off expenses you record, including what they were for.
• Subscriptions: name, amount, billing cycle, category, how often you use it, and whether you have marked it for cancellation.
• Savings and buffers: your cushion balance and goal, additional named savings buckets with their own goals and balances, and your allocation percentages.
• Rules and preferences: the automated allocation rules you configure and their thresholds.
• Plans and goals: the scenarios, life events, and assumptions you build in the Life Planner, which may describe intentions such as moving, changing jobs, or family changes.

Afford It information

When you use Afford It, you provide a free-text description of a problem, optionally a category, an approximate budget, and a ZIP code. Your description can be sensitive — it may touch on housing, health, legal trouble, or hardship. It is categorized on your own device and is not transmitted to us.

Feedback

If you use the feedback controls, we record whether you found results helpful, any optional comment you write, and the kind of help you were looking for. This is currently stored on your own device, not on our servers.

Technical information

Like any website, Ascendya is served over the internet, so our hosting and identity providers process standard technical data — IP address, browser and device type, timestamps, and requested pages — as part of delivering the service and keeping it secure.

What we do not collect

• Bank, credit union, brokerage, or credit card account credentials or transaction feeds. There is no account-linking integration in the product.
• Payment card numbers or billing details. Ascendya is free and has no payment processor.
• Social Security numbers, government identification numbers, or date of birth.
• Precise geolocation. Afford It asks only for a ZIP code; the product does not request GPS access.
• Biometric information.
• Information from data brokers, credit bureaus, or advertising networks.

Understanding this section explains most of the rest of the policy.

On your device

Ascendya is local-first. Your financial data is written to your browser's local storage on the device you are using, under a key tied to your account identifier so multiple accounts on one device stay separate. This local copy supports use on the device. It does not mean the information is kept exclusively on your device; signed-in accounts also use server sync when it is configured and available.

Clearing browser storage, using private browsing, or switching browsers removes or separates the local copy. An available synchronized copy may be restored when you sign in. Use the export feature to keep your own copy.

On our server, when account sync is available

When you sign in and cross-device sync is configured and available, Ascendya automatically retrieves your server copy or uploads your existing local plan if no server copy exists. Later changes are saved locally and sent to our server in the background. The synchronized data is stored in Supabase as a record tied to your account identifier. The app does not currently provide a separate opt-in or a user-facing switch to disable synchronization.

Requests to read or write that record require you to be signed in. The account identifier used is taken from your authenticated session on the server — it is not read from the request, so one user cannot ask for another user's record.

If synchronization is not configured or is unavailable, Ascendya continues to work normally using local storage alone.

We use information only for the purposes below.

• To operate the features you use — calculating paycheck splits, tracking bills against your cushion, producing forecasts and scenarios, and displaying your own data back to you.
• To keep your data available to you, including automatically synchronizing signed-in account data across devices when server sync is configured and available.
• To authenticate you and keep your account secure, including detecting and preventing unauthorized access, abuse, and fraud.
• To match Afford It results to what you described, your stated budget, and your ZIP code.
• To diagnose problems, fix bugs, and keep the service running.
• To respond when you contact us.
• To comply with law and to protect the rights and safety of our users, the public, and ourselves.

What we do not do with it

• We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
• We do not use your financial information to target advertising to you, on Ascendya or anywhere else.
• We do not use your financial information to train machine-learning models.
• We do not build profiles about you for anyone else, and we do not share your data with data brokers.
• We do not make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you. Ascendya's calculations are arithmetic shown to you, not decisions made about you.

Financial information gets stricter handling than anything else in the product.

• It is collected only from you. We do not obtain it from banks, credit bureaus, employers, or any other outside source.
• It is stored on your device and also sent to our server for signed-in account synchronization when that service is configured and available.
• It is not sent to the organizations or assistance programs shown in Afford It. Our service providers process information as described in the service-provider section below. When Afford It indicates that something may fit your budget, that comparison happens on your device; the organization is never told your budget, your balances, or anything else about your finances.
• It is never placed in a URL, query string, or link. Following a link out of Ascendya does not carry your financial information to the destination.
• It is not sent to an analytics provider, because we do not use one.
• It is not used for advertising, scoring, ranking, or any purpose other than showing you your own information.

If you use the Cushion budget option in Afford It, Ascendya reads your Safe-to-Spend or cushion balance to pre-fill a spending range. That reading happens entirely on your device and is used only to order and label results for you.

Your description stays local

What you type into Afford It is categorized on your own device using fixed keyword and pattern rules. It is not sent to us, to an artificial-intelligence provider, or to any third party. We do not keep a record of what you said you needed help with.

Location

Afford It uses a ZIP code, which you type in. Ascendya does not request GPS or precise-location permission, does not track your location in the background, and does not track it continuously. A ZIP code identifies an area, not a person or an address, and assistance programs are administered locally, which is why it is needed at all.

Your ZIP code is used for the current search — to label results and to build a provider-search link — and is not stored on our servers.

When you follow a link

If you click through to a provider search or to an organization's website, you leave Ascendya. A general provider-search link includes the type of service and your ZIP code, because that is the search being run; it contains nothing about your finances. Once you arrive, that site's own privacy policy and tracking apply, and we have no control over or responsibility for it.

Ascendya does not currently send your information to any artificial-intelligence provider. The Ascendya Chat workspace shows a "Coming Soon" notice and does not accept or process messages, so there are no stored AI conversations.

Afford It's categorization is fixed rules running on your device. It is not a generative model, it does not learn from your input, and nothing you type leaves your device for that purpose.

If we introduce an AI feature, we will update this policy before it launches to state which provider processes the information, exactly what is sent, whether conversations are stored and for how long, whether they are linked to your account, and what the provider is permitted to do with them. We will not quietly begin sending your financial information to a third party.

Ascendya uses only what it needs to function.

• Strictly necessary cookies: set by Clerk to keep you signed in and to protect against session abuse. Without these, authentication cannot work.
• Browser local storage: used to hold your financial data on your device, along with small interface preferences such as which workspace you last opened and whether you have seen a one-time hint.

We do not use advertising cookies, analytics cookies, tracking pixels, session-replay tools, fingerprinting, or third-party marketing tags. Because we set no non-essential cookies, Ascendya does not display a cookie consent banner — there is nothing to consent to beyond what is required to sign you in.

You can clear cookies and site data through your browser at any time. Clearing them will sign you out, and will remove any financial data held locally on that device that has not been synchronized or exported.

We keep our provider list short. We do not sell data to anyone, and each provider below may use the information only to deliver its service to us.

Clerk — authentication

Receives and stores your account credentials, email address, any profile details you supply, and session and security data. Necessary to create and secure accounts. Clerk does not receive your financial information.

Supabase — account synchronization

Stores the synchronized copy of your financial data, keyed to your account identifier. It receives this only when synchronization is active. Access from our application uses a server-side credential that is never exposed to your browser.

Railway — hosting

Runs the application and serves it to your browser, and therefore processes connection data such as IP address and request metadata as part of normal operation and security.

Third parties you choose to visit

Links in Afford It take you to organizations and search services. We do not transmit your information to them; your browser makes that request when you click. Their policies then apply.

Other disclosures

• Legal: we may disclose information if required by law, subpoena, or valid legal process, or where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect rights, safety, or property, or to investigate fraud or abuse.
• Business transfer: if Ascendya is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, information may transfer as part of that transaction. We will give notice before your information becomes subject to a materially different policy.
• With your direction: if you ask us to share something, we will act on that request.

Data stored on your device stays there until you delete it, clear your browser storage, or the browser removes it. We cannot delete it remotely, because we cannot reach it.

If you use synchronization, the server copy is kept while your account is active so the service can function. Each new sync replaces the previous copy rather than accumulating versions.

Resetting your data clears the local copy and requests deletion of the synchronized server copy. That request needs a working connection and can fail; the current interface does not independently confirm successful server deletion. Contact us if you need confirmation that your server copy has been removed.

Deleting your account removes your account and sign-in credentials from our identity provider. On its own it does not delete a synchronized copy of your financial data. If you want that removed, reset your data before deleting your account, or contact us at the address below and we will remove it for you.

We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, and afterwards only where a longer period is required to comply with a legal obligation, resolve a dispute, or enforce our agreements. Routine backups and server logs kept by our infrastructure providers may persist for a limited period after deletion before being overwritten in the ordinary course.

We do not state fixed retention periods here, because setting them requires operational decisions and provider configuration that are not yet finalized. We would rather say so than publish a number we do not actually enforce.

We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information:

• All traffic is encrypted in transit using HTTPS.
• Authentication is delegated to a specialist identity provider rather than implemented in-house, and we never handle your password.
• Every route that is not public requires an authenticated session.
• Requests for your synced data are scoped to the account identifier taken from your server-side session, so one account cannot read or overwrite another's record.
• The database credential used for synchronization is server-side only and is never sent to your browser.
• Financial data is stored on your device, with an account-scoped server copy when synchronization is configured and available.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Protect your account by using a strong, unique password, keeping your device secure, and signing out on shared computers.

If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify affected users and any regulator as required by applicable law, and will describe what happened and what to do. You can report a suspected vulnerability or account compromise to ascendyafinance@gmail.com.

You have direct, self-service control over your information in Ascendya:

• Access and export — download your financial data as a file from the privacy tools inside the Cushion workspace.
• Correct — every figure is editable in the interface at any time.
• Delete locally — reset your data from the privacy tools or from Settings, which clears it from that device.
• Delete the server copy — resetting your data requests deletion of the synchronized record. If you are offline or the request fails, a server copy can remain. Contact us to request or confirm server deletion.
• Delete your account — remove your account and credentials through your account settings. Reset your data first if you also want the synchronized copy deleted, or ask us and we will remove it.
• Synchronization — the app currently has no user-facing sync-off switch. Contact us with questions before entering information you do not want synchronized.

Depending on where you live, you may also have statutory rights to request access to the personal information we hold, to request correction or deletion, to obtain a portable copy, to opt out of sale or targeted advertising (we do neither), to limit the use of sensitive personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

To make a request, contact us at ascendyafinance@gmail.com. We will verify the request against the email on your account, respond within the period required by applicable law, and will not charge you for a reasonable request. If we cannot fulfill a request, we will explain why. You may use an authorized agent where the law permits, and we may need to verify their authority.

You may also have a right to appeal a refusal, and to lodge a complaint with your state attorney general or applicable regulator.

Ascendya is intended for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, as stated in our Terms of Service, and you are asked to confirm this during sign-up.

Ascendya is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. We do not market to minors, and no part of the product is designed for or aimed at them.

If we learn that we have collected personal information from someone under 18, we will delete it and remove the account. If you believe a minor has provided us information, contact us at the address below and we will act on it.

Several U.S. states give residents specific privacy rights. Where a state privacy law applies to us, we honor the rights it grants — including access, correction, deletion, portability, and opting out of sale, targeted advertising, and certain profiling.

Two points apply regardless of state, because they are properties of how Ascendya is built: we do not sell personal information, and we do not process it for targeted advertising or for profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

Financial information is treated as sensitive under several state laws. We use it solely to provide the features you asked for, and never for advertising, inference, or disclosure to third parties for their own purposes.

Requests can be made at the contact address below and are handled the same way regardless of where you live — we apply these protections to all users rather than only where a statute compels it.

We do not list specific statutes here or claim certification under any of them. Which laws apply depends on where Ascendya is established and on user volume, and that determination has not been made.

Ascendya is operated from and intended for use in the United States, and its content — particularly the assistance programs in Afford It — is specific to U.S. programs and will be of little use elsewhere.

If you access Ascendya from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States, where privacy laws may differ from those in your country. By using Ascendya you understand that this transfer occurs.

We have not implemented the specific mechanisms required to offer the service to residents of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or other regions with comprehensive transfer requirements, and we do not target the service to those regions.

We will update this policy as Ascendya changes, and we will revise the effective date at the top when we do.

If a change materially affects how we handle your information — for example, introducing analytics, sending information to an AI provider, or adding a payment processor — we will update this page before that change takes effect, and will make reasonable efforts to notify you directly.

We encourage you to review this page periodically. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised policy.

For privacy questions, requests about your information, or reports of a suspected security issue, contact ascendyafinance@gmail.com.

Please include the email address associated with your account and describe what you are asking for, so we can verify and act on your request. Ascendya is operated by a small team; we respond as quickly as we reasonably can and within any period the law requires.