A Note On BudgetForLife's Superior Privacy & Security
As soon as you click the 'Get My Budget' button, BudgetForLife becomes completely, 100% yours. What's happening technically upon clicking this button is that users make a copy of our BudgetForLife template and add it to their own Google Drive. And since users' budgets exist only within their personal Google Drives, we as the creators have absolutely zero access to it. Thus, the information within users' BudgetForLife spreadsheets is as private and secure as Google itself! In all honesty, we don't even know who our users are, much less what they're doing with their money. Let's contrast that with what the other guys are doing, like Mint, YNAB, Every Dollar, Personal Capital, banks, and the rest of them:
IdentityOther budget softwares require users to give their identity away by signing up with their name, email, and more. BudgetForLife users never have to sign up for anything or verify their identity, maintaining full privacy from day one.
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PlatformOther budget softwares require users to join their platform. BudgetForLife uses Google Drive, a platform that users already use, know, and trust. Which do you think is more likely to suffer a data breach? (Hint: it's not Google).
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OwnershipOther budget softwares keep ownership to themselves. At BudgetForLife, we're not just letting people use our software, we're actually giving them our software! Total and autonomous ownership belongs to the user.
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PrivacyOther budget softwares know every dollar their users make and spend. Hence claims like, "new users save $ amount in the first year!" - they see everything. On the other hand, no one sees your BudgetForLife but you. Turns out the supposed perk of syncing with your cards can come at a cost!
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CostOther budget softwares constantly upsell users, or even worse, charge them money from the get-go. BudgetForLife users, however, always get free access to the base version, and are never targeted for upsells or lured into upgrading. Your money is your money, and BFL respects that!
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QualityOther budget softwares have fewer features, are less customizable, and are less frequently updated. In fact, several years can go by between meaningful updates! BudgetForLife does more, is more personalized to each user, and is constantly improving.
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Personally, I would never use one of those other budgets. That's why we built ours in the first place!
The Key Difference Between 'Us' and 'Them'
Why can BudgetForLife make so many claims that the major players in the industry can't? Simply put, it's because at the end of the day, the major players were intentionally built by profit-seeking enterprises and employees. They exist primarily to make money, and thus are limited to improving by only as much as makes 'business-sense' - i.e., as much as users will pay for.
BudgetForLife is a totally different story. We built BFL on accident and out of passion. We actually just really, really enjoy this stuff! Recognizing its utility, we've been giving it away for years with genuinely no catch - something you'll never be able to say about our competitors. Now, 7 years in and over ten thousand hours invested, not much has changed! We continue to iterate and improve, not because the money is suddenly flowing, but because let's face it: we can't help ourselves :)
Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that purpose-driven people can do more and do better than people chasing after the next dollar.
BudgetForLife is a totally different story. We built BFL on accident and out of passion. We actually just really, really enjoy this stuff! Recognizing its utility, we've been giving it away for years with genuinely no catch - something you'll never be able to say about our competitors. Now, 7 years in and over ten thousand hours invested, not much has changed! We continue to iterate and improve, not because the money is suddenly flowing, but because let's face it: we can't help ourselves :)
Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that purpose-driven people can do more and do better than people chasing after the next dollar.
Reviewing BudgetForLife Permissions
All of that said, whenever an app asks for any sort of permissions, it can freak us out a little bit. Thus, in the spirit of transparency, allow us to explain what new users can expect when getting started with BudgetForLife. If you still have any unanswered questions, please don't hesitate to reach out!
After users generate their own copy of BudgetForLife, they open it and find themselves at this welcome page. As new users, naturally they'll click the 'Get Started' button, and it's at that point where they'll come across the big, scary, permissions message:
What does this mean? Well, first of all, it means that Google has already inspected the safety and legitimacy of BudgetForLife and given it its stamp of approval. That's a big deal! If Google didn't trust BudgetForLife, users would be seeing this message instead. Still, even though Google's already checked us out, they ask users to authorize because they want to make sure people know what they're doing. That's good news, because we want that, too :)
In our case, users are simply giving BudgetForLife permission to run. BudgetForLife operates on thousands of lines of code we've written in Google Apps Script that basically give the spreadsheet superpowers. But remember what we mentioned earlier? Users own the spreadsheet, not us! We're giving away the BudgetForLife software itself; therefore, users own the whole thing.
Now who or what are users granting access to? - "BudgetForLife Menus" - not us as the creators, not getmybudget.com, but BudgetForLife Menus. And who owns BudgetForLife Menus? The user does! It's all internal. What's happening is the user's spreadsheet is requesting the user's permission for the spreadsheet itself to function. Essentially, it's Google saying, "Do you know this is a super spreadsheet with lots of extra features that other spreadsheets don't have? Are you sure you want this spreadsheet to use its super powers?" Of course! The way they ask it is so cautious that it can make us feel like everything is about to go wrong, but the reality is there's not a more secure or more private budget software on planet Earth. Not even close.
Okay, so what is BudgetForLife Menus? Well, see for yourself:
Notice those last several functions on the toolbar - Categories, Designations, Dates, Log, Savings, Update, and Feedback. Those are what Google calls BudgetForLife 'menus.' They enhance the user experience and allow users to customize their own BudgetForLife spreadsheets to their liking without fear of breaking it. Without them, the budget simply won't work. These menus are precisely the 'third party web content' that users are giving permission to display. These menus are what run in the background and what users give permission to 'view and manage' their BudgetForLife spreadsheet.
After all, in order for users to add more months to end of their budget, for example, the 'Dates' menu needs to know what the current last month is. The examples could go on, but hopefully you get the point. As for the little gray message at the bottom that says 'you may be sharing sensitive info with this site or app' - that's a standard (and irremovable) warning on all Google Apps Script projects. Users of BudgetForLife don't share any information with anything or anyone.
The key to emphasize is that users are not giving anything or anyone on the outside permission to access anything (not their Google account, not their BudgetForLife Spreadsheet, and not anything else. Rather, users are giving permission to their BudgetForLife spreadsheet to work within the spreadsheet itself, which belongs to them and them alone. You can see more proof of this claim here. For what it's worth, BudgetForLife spreadsheets ask us, the creators, to authorize BudgetForLife Menus in the same way as everyone else. There are no tricks up our sleeves.
After all, in order for users to add more months to end of their budget, for example, the 'Dates' menu needs to know what the current last month is. The examples could go on, but hopefully you get the point. As for the little gray message at the bottom that says 'you may be sharing sensitive info with this site or app' - that's a standard (and irremovable) warning on all Google Apps Script projects. Users of BudgetForLife don't share any information with anything or anyone.
The key to emphasize is that users are not giving anything or anyone on the outside permission to access anything (not their Google account, not their BudgetForLife Spreadsheet, and not anything else. Rather, users are giving permission to their BudgetForLife spreadsheet to work within the spreadsheet itself, which belongs to them and them alone. You can see more proof of this claim here. For what it's worth, BudgetForLife spreadsheets ask us, the creators, to authorize BudgetForLife Menus in the same way as everyone else. There are no tricks up our sleeves.
In Summary
* No one and nothing else can see or access your BudgetForLife spreadsheet but you - not even us, the creators.
* Your BudgetForLife spreadsheet can only operate within itself - it cannot see or manage anything else in your Google Drive, Gmail, etc.
* Your BudgetForLife spreadsheet does not share any of your information or data with us or with anything in any way, shape, or form
* These truths are unparalleled by other budgeting software out there.
* Your BudgetForLife spreadsheet can only operate within itself - it cannot see or manage anything else in your Google Drive, Gmail, etc.
* Your BudgetForLife spreadsheet does not share any of your information or data with us or with anything in any way, shape, or form
* These truths are unparalleled by other budgeting software out there.