Trust · FAQ
Short, direct answers — the same standard as the rest of this site: no claim without something behind it.
Advice & accuracy
No. FinPlanTools is a calculation engine, not an advisor: it computes projections, taxes, and Social Security estimates from the numbers you and your assistant give it, but it never recommends what you should do. Read its output the way you'd read a spreadsheet, not the way you'd read a licensed advisor's opinion — the math is only as good as the inputs, and every decision stays yours.
The engine itself computes correctly from whatever inputs it's given — that part is tested against IRS tables and thousands of test cases. What can go wrong is the assistant mis-entering an input on your behalf, which is why every result traces back to the exact inputs used in a snapshot you can check against what you actually told it.
Federal income tax — both ordinary and capital-gains — is modeled, along with state-level tax for the jurisdictions modeled so far. Exactly which years, brackets, and states are covered shifts as that coverage expands, so rather than duplicate a list that would go stale here, see Methodology for the complete breakdown of what is and isn't modeled.
Your data & privacy
Your conversation runs through whichever AI provider you're using — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or another MCP client — and that provider sees everything you type. FinPlanTools itself only receives the structured tool calls your assistant makes: numbers in, numbers out, no chat transcript. In local mode, our own servers never enter the picture at all — see Where your data lives for the full local-vs-hosted breakdown.
Never. Balance sync reads a plain machine-readable file you export yourself — any source that lets you export your data works, since your assistant maps it into the shape FinPlanTools expects. There's no account-aggregator connection, no bank login, and no live feed to break. Monarch Money is an easy example because its own MCP server can hand that export straight to your assistant, but nothing about the sync is tied to it. If you don't provide an export, there's simply nothing to sync.
In local mode, your data is a JSON file on your own disk — delete the file and it's gone, with no copy anywhere else. In hosted mode there's no delete button to press: every uploaded state document expires and stops resolving within the hour on its own. More detail in Where your data lives.
Access & cost
Free during early access. If fees are introduced later, they'll come with advance notice — nothing changes on an existing setup without warning first.
Yes, today, with a plain JSON state file per client — there's no multi-client dashboard yet, so you're managing separate files by hand. A dedicated professionals workflow is in progress; see For professionals for where that's headed.
Any assistant that speaks MCP (Model Context Protocol) can connect — Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP-compatible clients. See the setup guide for how to connect yours.
Answered? The setup guide walks through connecting your assistant, start to finish.