Data Protection Notice
Last updated on Last updated: 21 Nov 2025
This Data Protection Notice explains in more detail how Efficient Dollar collects, uses, stores, and protects your data, with a particular focus on financial data, third-party integrations such as Plaid, and your rights and choices as a user.
This Notice should be read together with our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. If there is any conflict, this Notice is intended to provide more specific detail about data protection practices, especially for financial data and integrations.
1. Who We Are
Efficient Dollar is a personal finance and budgeting platform designed to help individuals and households improve their financial stability, manage spending, and build long-term wealth.
For questions about data protection, you can contact us at:
Email: support@efficientdollar.com
2. Categories of Data We Process
We process the following main categories of data:
- Name
- Email address
- Authentication identifiers (e.g., Google sign-in ID)
- Communication history (messages sent via the contact form or email)
2.2 Usage and Technical Data
- IP address and approximate location (country/region)
- Browser type, device type, and operating system
- Pages visited, actions taken, and feature usage
- Session identifiers and authentication cookies
2.3 Budget and Profile Data
- Budget categories and amounts
- Planned expenses, savings goals, and targets
- Account preferences and settings
2.4 Financial Account and Transaction Data (Future Plaid Integration)
Once Plaid-powered connections are enabled, and only if you choose to connect financial accounts, we may receive:
- Financial institution name(s)
- Bank account names and masked identifiers
- Account balances
- Transaction history (e.g., dates, descriptions, amounts, merchant information)
- Limited account profile details (non-sensitive identifiers)
We do not receive or store your bank login credentials.
Those are entered directly with Plaid or your financial institution and are never visible to Efficient Dollar.
3. Legal Basis and Purpose of Processing
Depending on your location, we may rely on different legal bases for processing your data. In general, we process data:
We process your data when it is necessary to:
- Create and manage your account
- Provide budgeting tools and financial analytics
- Offer future subscription features
- Provide dashboards and reports based on your financial and budgeting data
3.2 With Your Consent
We rely on your consent when you:
- Opt into newsletters or marketing communications
- Choose to connect bank accounts via Plaid
- Agree to cookies that are not strictly necessary for the service
You can withdraw your consent at any time (for example, by disconnecting a financial account, unsubscribing from emails, or adjusting cookie preferences).
3.3 For Legitimate Interests
We process certain data to:
- Improve our services and user experience
- Detect fraud and unauthorized access
- Maintain security and system integrity
- Generate aggregated, anonymized analytics
Where required, we balance these interests with your rights and freedoms.
3.4 To Comply With Legal Obligations
We may process and retain certain data to:
- Meet accounting, tax, or regulatory obligations
- Respond to lawful requests from authorities (where applicable)
4. How We Use Plaid and Financial Data
4.1 Plaid as a Data Processor
When you choose to connect financial accounts, Efficient Dollar uses Plaid to securely access and transmit financial data.
Plaid acts as a data processor and connects to your financial institution using your consent. You can review Plaid’s own privacy practices in their End User Privacy Policy, which will be presented during the connection flow.
4.2 Data We Receive from Plaid
With your explicit permission, we may receive:
- Account balances
- Transaction data
- Limited account details used to identify and categorize your accounts
We use this information to:
- Power budgeting and analytics features
- Provide spending insights, trends, and summaries
- Help you track savings, debt payoff, and long-term goals
4.3 No Access to Your Credentials
Efficient Dollar:
- Does not receive your bank usernames or passwords
- Does not store banking credentials
- Relies entirely on Plaid to manage secure connections
4.4 Disconnecting Financial Accounts
You may disconnect your financial accounts at any time from within the app (once this feature is launched). When you do so:
- Future data will no longer be synced
- You may request deletion of previously stored financial data (see Section 7)
5. Third-Party Service Providers
We work with carefully selected third parties to provide parts of the service. These may include:
- Plaid — financial data connectivity
- Resend — sending transactional and notification emails
- Stripe (or similar) — handling subscription payments (future feature)
- Netlify (and hosting providers) — hosting and serving the application
- Analytics providers (e.g., Google Analytics) — usage and performance metrics
- Authentication providers (e.g., Google) — sign-in and identity verification
Each provider is contractually required to:
- Protect your data
- Use your data only for the services they provide to Efficient Dollar
- Handle data securely and in accordance with applicable laws
6. Data Retention
We retain your data only for as long as necessary for the purposes described in this Notice, including to:
- Provide the services and features you use
- Maintain accurate records of your account and usage
- Comply with legal and regulatory obligations
- Resolve disputes and enforce agreements
When data is no longer needed, we will:
- Delete it, or
- Anonymize it so it can no longer be linked to you
If you request account deletion, we will remove or anonymize your personal and financial data in accordance with our Privacy Policy, subject to any legal retention requirements.
7. Your Rights
Depending on your location, you may have some or all of the following rights:
- Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
- Correction — request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data
- Deletion — request deletion of your personal data (subject to legal exceptions)
- Restriction — request that we restrict certain processing activities
- Portability — request a copy of your data in a portable format
- Objection — object to certain types of processing (e.g., direct marketing)
- Withdraw Consent — withdraw consent at any time, where applicable
To exercise these rights, contact us at support@efficientdollar.com.
We may need to verify your identity before responding to certain requests.
8. International Data Transfers
Efficient Dollar is based in the United States. If you access the service from outside the U.S., your data may be transferred to and processed in the U.S. or other countries where our service providers operate.
We take appropriate measures to protect your data in such transfers, consistent with applicable laws.
9. Changes to This Data Protection Notice
We may update this Notice as we introduce new features, such as:
- Plaid integrations and bank connectivity
- Paid subscription features
- Additional analytics or reporting tools
When we make changes, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. In some cases, we may provide additional notice (e.g., on the website or by email).
If you have any questions about this Data Protection Notice or how we handle your data, you can contact us at:
support@efficientdollar.com