Privacy

1. Who is responsible

Household Budget is operated by Brett Clarke, trading as Household Budget (ABN 17 244 664 165). We are bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. If anything here concerns you, email info@householdbudget.com.au — a person reads it.

2. What we never ask for

This matters more than anything below, so it comes first. We do not collect, and the app has no field for:

• Bank account numbers or BSBs
• Credit or debit card numbers
• Your tax file number
• Your bank login, or any connection to your bank
• Your actual transactions

The app never connects to a bank. It works from figures you type in, which is why it can help you plan without ever touching your accounts. There is nothing here for someone to steal and spend.

3. What we do store

Only what the app needs to show you your own numbers:

• Your account — your email address, and a password that is hashed by our authentication provider before it reaches us. We never see it and cannot recover it.
• Your household — a name you choose, how many adults, the ages of any children, and how often you are paid. Ages only: we do not ask for children's names or dates of birth.
• Your money — income amounts and how often they arrive; bills and everyday spending with the categories you give them; annual expenses and what you have set aside for them; savings goals; debts, their balances and rates; and any what-if scenarios you save.
• Your providers — if you choose to use that part of the app: company names, account or policy numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, websites, renewal dates and any notes you write.
• Technical — a cookie that keeps you signed in, and a light-or-dark preference stored in your own browser rather than on our servers.

Everything in that list is there because you typed it. We do not buy data about you, infer anything about you, or add to your record from any other source.

4. What we use it for

To run the app for you: to do your arithmetic, show you your figures, and send you the emails the service depends on — confirming your address, resetting your password, and inviting someone you have asked us to invite. We also send a weekly summary containing figures from your own budget — what a fund is short by, what is safe to spend. It is on to begin with, because being told before a bill lands is the point of the app; every one of those emails carries a link that stops them, stopping them takes one click and no password, and the switch is in Settings too.

That is the whole list. In particular, we do not:

• Sell your information, or share it with anyone for their own purposes
• Show advertising, or allow anyone to advertise to you based on your data
• Build a profile of you, or score you
• Pass your details to lenders, insurers, brokers or comparison services

Our only income is subscriptions. We have no reason to do any of the above and no intention of starting.

5. Who else handles it

Running a service means using other companies for parts of it. Each one only sees what it needs:

• Supabase — stores your data and manages sign-in.
• Vercel — runs the app itself and serves the pages.
• Resend — delivers our emails. It sees your email address and whatever those emails contain. If you have asked for the weekly summary, that includes figures from your budget: what a fund is short by, what is safe to spend, which plan is coming up for renewal. Turn the summary off and nothing of yours reaches them but your address.
• Stripe — handles subscription payments. Your card details go straight to Stripe and never reach us.

Some of these store or process information outside Australia. By using the app you agree to that disclosure, and we take reasonable steps to use providers with proper security practices. We do not give any of them permission to use your information for their own purposes.

We will only hand your information to anyone else if the law requires it, and we will tell you if we are permitted to.

6. How it is protected

• Everything travels over an encrypted connection.
• Each household's data is walled off in the database itself, not merely in the app on top of it. A fault in our code cannot show one household another's figures, because the database refuses the query.
• Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider. Nobody here can read yours.
• No employee browses your budget. We look at individual data only if you ask us to, for support.

No system is perfect. If a breach occurs that is likely to cause you serious harm, we will tell you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.

7. Getting your data, and getting rid of it

• Seeing it — the app shows you everything we hold. You can also export the lot to a spreadsheet at any time, including during a free trial.
• Correcting it — edit anything, any time. It is your data.
• Deleting it — email us and we will delete your account and everything in it within 30 days. We keep only what the law requires us to, such as payment records for tax purposes.

If you stop subscribing, we keep your data so it is waiting if you come back. Ask us to delete it and we will.

8. Cookies

One cookie, and it exists to keep you signed in. There are no advertising cookies, no tracking pixels and no third-party trackers, which is why you have never seen a cookie banner here.

9. Children

This is a tool for adults running a household. It is not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect information from children. Where the app asks about children it asks only their ages, to work out costs — never their names.

10. Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects you, we will email you before it takes effect. The date at the top always shows the current version.

11. Complaints

Email info@householdbudget.com.au and we will respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.