Privacy policy

What Tweed doesn't collect from the calculators

When you use a Tweed calculator, everything you enter (your age, balances, contribution amounts, return assumptions, and any other figures) is processed on your own device, in your browser. It is not transmitted to Tweed, and Tweed never sees it or stores it.

That is true of every free calculator on this site whether or not you have an account. A calculator never posts your figures to your account or to a server. The one page that can send your inputs to Tweed is the Roth conversion plan, and only when you choose to buy it; the section on the plan below sets out exactly what it saves.

What the calculators keep in your browser

The RMD, Roth conversion, 401(k) and Coast FIRE calculators save the figures you enter in your browser's session storage, so they survive a page reload and can carry over from one of those calculators to another during the same visit. Session storage stays on your device, Tweed cannot read it, and your browser clears it when you close the tab.

The Roth conversion plan page keeps a copy of your plan inputs, and the private link to any plan you started buying, in your browser's local storage. Local storage stays on your device after you close the tab, until you clear your browser's site data. If you answer the analytics banner shown to visitors in Europe, that answer is kept in local storage too, so the site does not ask again.

What never gets sent to analytics

The values you type into a calculator or a Roth conversion plan are never included in an analytics event, in any form, including rounded, bucketed, or as a range. Tweed records that something happened, for example that a plan purchase was started. It never records what the calculation said.

The same applies to anything held in an account or a saved plan. Those figures are never sent to Google Analytics, never attached to an analytics identifier, and never used to target anything at you.

If you buy a Roth conversion plan

This year's result on the Roth conversion plan page is calculated in your browser, and nothing is sent to Tweed while you use it. When you choose to buy the ten-year plan, the page saves your plan inputs to Tweed's database under a random private link and then sends you to Stripe to pay.

What a saved plan holds:

• The plan inputs you entered: filing status, state, birth year and a spouse's birth year if you give one, retirement year, traditional IRA balance and after-tax basis, other income, tax-exempt interest, Social Security amounts and start years, the return, inflation and discount rates, the bracket you want to fill, how you pay the tax, and any optional figures you add (last year's tax and income, withholding, an existing Roth balance, household size and the survivor age).
• The private link token, when the plan was created and last changed, whether it has been paid for, and the Stripe checkout session that paid for it.

What a saved plan does not hold, by design:

• No name and no email address. A plan is not tied to a Tweed account or to the email you sign in with.
• No card details. Payment happens on Stripe's own checkout page, and Tweed receives only whether the payment went through and the checkout session number.

Anyone who has the private link can open the plan, so keep it to yourself and your tax preparer. Changes you make to a paid plan are saved to the same record. Saved plans sit in the same Turso database as accounts.

For a paid plan, the page sends that plan's computed yearly figures (the conversion, the federal and state tax, the room left in the bracket, the bracket top, MAGI and the Medicare surcharge), with your filing status, target bracket and state, to Anthropic's Claude model, which drafts one explanation sentence per year. No link, name or email goes with them. The drafted sentences are stored in Tweed's database, keyed by a fingerprint of those figures, so the same figures are not sent twice.

A saved plan is kept until you ask for it to be deleted, or for 24 months after it was last opened, whichever comes first. After that it is deleted automatically.

To delete a plan, email [email protected] with the plan link. Because a plan is not tied to an email address, the link is how Tweed finds it. Tweed deletes it within 30 days.

Stripe keeps its own record of your purchase under its own retention rules and tax-record requirements.

If you create an account

Tweed has an optional signed-in area for tracking retirement progress over time. An account only exists if you ask for one, and nothing on the rest of the site requires it.

What an account holds:

• Your email address, which is the whole of your identity here. There is no password.
• The plan you enter: year of birth, a spouse's year of birth if you give one, filing status, state, the age you want to retire, household income, what you expect to spend in retirement, income you already expect to be guaranteed, and the return, inflation and withdrawal rates you choose.
• The accounts you add: the type of account, whose it is, the institution's name, the balance, and what you and any employer contribute each year.

What an account does not hold, by design:

• No full account numbers. You can add the last four characters to tell two accounts apart, and the server truncates anything longer to four before it is written, so a full number cannot be stored even by mistake.
• No password, because sign-in is a link sent to your email instead.
• No login details for any bank or broker, and no connection to one. Balances are typed in by hand. Tweed cannot see your actual accounts and is not connected to them.
• No holdings. Tweed tracks what an account is worth and how it is taxed, never which investments are inside it.

The data sits in a hosted database run by Turso, which stores it on Tweed's behalf and does not use it for anything of its own. Sign-in links are sent by Resend, an email provider, which sees your email address in order to deliver the message.

You can remove any single account from your list yourself, on the Accounts page.

To delete your account, email [email protected] from the address you signed up with. It is done by hand today, within seven days, and a deletion is permanent rather than a flag on a row that stays.

Staying signed in

Signing in sets one cookie, named tweed_session. It holds a random value and nothing else: no email address, no figures, nothing readable. It lasts thirty days, your browser will not let a script read it, and it is not sent when another site links to Tweed. Signing out deletes it and also ends the session on the server, so a copy of the cookie is useless afterwards.

The sign-in link emailed to you works once and expires after fifteen minutes. Tweed stores only a one-way hash of that link and of your session, so a copy of the database does not hand anyone a way into your account.

Analytics

Tweed uses Google Analytics 4 to see which pages get used and where the site can improve. Google Analytics sets cookies and collects information such as your device type, browser, approximate location, and the pages you visit. That information is processed by Google under its own privacy policy, and Tweed uses it only in aggregate. Tweed also counts clicks on partner links, labeled only by where the link sits on the page.

Google Analytics runs only on usetweed.com itself. If your device's time zone is in Europe, it is not loaded until you choose Accept on the banner shown there. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, it is not loaded unless you chose Accept on that banner earlier. Everywhere else it loads with the page.

Google Signals and advertising personalization are turned off, so this data is not used to build an advertising profile of you.

How to opt out of analytics

Tweed has no on-site switch for analytics. You can stop Google Analytics from your own browser in any of these ways, and the calculators work the same with all of them:

• Turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser or in a privacy extension that supports it. Tweed then does not load Google Analytics.
• Use a content or tracker blocker. Most block Google Analytics by default.
• Install Google's Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, which stops Google Analytics on every site you visit.
• Block or delete cookies for usetweed.com in your browser settings, which stops Google Analytics from keeping its cookies on your device.

If you answered the banner shown to visitors in Europe and want to change your answer, clear the site data for usetweed.com in your browser and the banner will ask again.

Cookies

Tweed sets two kinds of cookie and no others: the Google Analytics cookies described above, and the tweed_session cookie, only if you sign in. Stripe's checkout page is on Stripe's own site and sets its own cookies there. Tweed sets no advertising cookies of any kind.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The calculators keep working either way, and blocking the session cookie means you stay signed out.

Who handles data for Tweed

• Vercel hosts the site and runs its server functions, so it handles the requests your browser sends.
• Turso stores accounts and saved Roth conversion plans.
• Resend delivers sign-in emails.
• Stripe takes payment for the Roth conversion plan.
• Anthropic drafts the yearly explanation sentences in a paid plan, from the figures described above.
• Google runs Google Analytics.
• Formspree forwards messages sent through the contact form.

None of them receives what you type into a free calculator. Your figures are never sold and never shared with an advertiser.

The contact form

The form on the about page and the author page is handled by Formspree, which receives the name, email address and message you type and forwards them to Tweed. It is used to answer you and for nothing else: no mailing list, no marketing, no sharing. Emailing [email protected] directly skips Formspree entirely.

Affiliate links

Some pages link to third-party products, and Tweed may earn a commission if you sign up through one of those links. Affiliate links are ordinary links; they do not share your calculator inputs, your account, or any personal data with the destination.

Children's privacy

Tweed is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect their information. Accounts and the Roth conversion plan are meant for adults planning their own retirement.

Changes to this policy

The effective date above changes whenever this policy does. If a change means Tweed starts holding something it did not hold before, that gets said plainly here rather than folded into a general update.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or want your data deleted? Email [email protected].