Privacy Policy

The most important point Every calculation on this site — and every PDF report — is generated entirely in your browser. Your income, balances, debts, tax figures and every other number you enter are never transmitted to us or to anyone else, including our analytics provider.

1. Who we are

This policy describes how SmartFinClub ("we", "us") handles information in connection with https://www.smartfinclub.com. Contact details for privacy enquiries are on the contact page.

2. Information we do not collect

We do not collect, receive, store or transmit anything you enter into a calculator. This includes income, salary, loan balances, account balances, interest rates, debts, tax figures, investment values and every other number on every calculator page. Those values exist only in your browser's memory while the page is open.

We do not ask for and do not want Social Security numbers, account numbers, card numbers, passwords, or copies of tax returns. Please do not send them.

3. Information we do collect

Registration

If you choose to register in order to download PDF reports, we collect your name, email address, phone number, and your consent to be contacted. Registration is optional; the calculators work fully without it.

Registration is not a secure financial account. No password is created, no authentication is performed, and no financial data is held. Your name, email address and phone number are sent to us and kept in our records so we can send your report and any updates you've agreed to receive. Separately, your browser also keeps a small local record noting that you registered, purely so you aren't asked again on the same device — see the section below on cookies and local storage.

If you sign up for newsletter updates — through the registration form or the separate newsletter form on the homepage or a calculator page — we collect your name, email address, phone number, and your consent to be contacted. This is optional and separate from using the calculators, which never requires it. Your details are kept in our records and used to send you occasional emails about new calculators, tools and financial tips.

We may also use a third-party email and SMS service (such as Brevo) to help deliver these messages; if we do, your name, email address and phone number are shared with that provider under its own privacy policy, and any newsletter email you receive will include a link to unsubscribe. We do not share your details with any other third party for marketing purposes, and we do not sell your information.

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any newsletter email, or by asking us through the contact form.

Contact form

Name, email address, subject and the content of your message.

Consultation requests

Name, email address, phone number, the topic you select, the description you write, and — if you choose to send them — any documents you attach. Where a postal address is requested, that too. This information is used only to respond to your request and to provide the service you asked about.

Server logs

Our hosting provider records standard web server logs, typically including IP address, browser user agent, the page requested, and a timestamp. These are generated automatically by the web server, are used for security and to diagnose faults, and are retained according to the hosting provider's configuration.

Embedded calculators

Some of our calculators can be embedded on other websites. The embedded versions show no advertising, load no analytics or advertising scripts, set no cookies and do not send us anything you type into them. When an embedded calculator is shown on another website, we record only that website's domain name (for example, example.com), which calculator it was, the number of views and the first and last dates seen. We do not record your IP address or anything that identifies you. We use this only to see where our calculators are used and to check that the embedding terms are followed. The website that embeds a calculator has its own privacy policy, which applies to the rest of that page.

4. Cookies and local storage

This site uses Google Analytics, which sets cookies. They are first-party cookies (commonly named _ga and _ga_<container>) used to distinguish one visitor from another and to measure how the site is used. Section 5 describes this in full, including how to opt out. This site also uses Google AdSense, which sets advertising cookies — see Section 6 for details and how to opt out of personalized ads.

It also uses your browser's local storage for one purpose: to record that you have registered, so the PDF registration prompt is not shown to you repeatedly on the same device. That local record contains only your name and email address and the date you registered, and stays on your device — it is separate from, and in addition to, the copy of your registration details described in Section 3 above. You can remove the local copy by clearing site data in your browser; to remove the server-side copy, contact us.

Some calculator pages read parameters from the page URL when you use a "copy link to these results" feature. Those parameters are in the link you generate; they are not stored by us.

5. Analytics

This site uses Google Analytics 4, a service provided by Google, to understand how the site is used and which calculators people find useful. The measurement identifier in use is G-SDVBXMCR1D.

What Google Analytics collects

Pages you view and the order you view them in
Approximate location, derived from your IP address — typically city level
Device type, operating system, browser and screen size
How you arrived at the site, such as a search engine or another website
How long you spend on a page
Specific actions on the site, listed below

The actions we record

Alongside page views, we record a small set of named events so we can see which tools are used and where people give up. Most carry only the name of the calculator involved. The search events at the end of the list are the exception, because they also carry what was typed into a search box:

calculator_opened, advanced_mode_opened
pdf_requested, pdf_generated
registration_prompted, registration_completed
share_link_copied
tool_search_used, tool_search_empty — these include the words typed into the tool search box on the home page, so that we can add calculators people look for and cannot find
blog_search_used, blog_search_empty, blog_filter_used — these include the words typed into the article search box on the FinTalks page, and which topic button was chosen, so that we can see which subjects readers look for and write about the ones they cannot find. Search words are shortened to 60 characters, and anything made up only of digits and symbols is dropped before it is sent, so a mistyped figure is not recorded. Please do not type personal details into any search box.

What is never sent to Google

Nothing you type into a calculator. Your income, salary, loan balances, account balances, interest rates, debts, tax figures and every other number on every calculator page stay in your browser and are never transmitted — not to us, and not to Google. The analytics code is restricted by an explicit list of permitted parameters, so a calculator figure cannot reach an analytics payload even by mistake. Nor do we send your name, email address or phone number to Google.

Cookies and retention

Google Analytics sets first-party cookies in your browser to distinguish one visitor from another. Google retains the data according to the retention period configured for the property and its own policies. Google processes this data as described in its own privacy documentation, and it may process it outside your country.

How to opt out

Install Google's official browser opt-out add-on, available from Google's own site.
Use a browser or extension that blocks analytics scripts. Every calculator on this site works fully with analytics blocked — nothing here depends on it.
Clear or block cookies for this site in your browser settings.
Use your browser's private browsing mode.

We do not currently operate a cookie consent banner. If you are visiting from a jurisdiction that requires prior consent for analytics cookies, please use one of the methods above before browsing, or contact us.

6. Advertising

This site uses Google AdSense to display advertising. Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet.

Ads may be personalized based on your prior visits to this site or other sites, unless you have opted out of personalized advertising. You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings, or opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalized advertising by visiting www.aboutads.info/choices.

To learn more about how Google uses data from sites and apps that use its services, see How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.

Advertising is served both through Google's automatic placement (Auto ads) and through reserved slots marked on the page. Either way the placements are clearly labelled "Advertisement" and are kept separate from calculator results and editorial content, so it is always clear what is an ad and what is not. As described in Section 2, no calculator input — income, balances, debts, tax figures or any other number you enter — is ever shared with Google or any advertising partner; ad targeting can only ever be based on your general browsing activity, never on what you calculate here.

This site is not directed at children under 13 (see Section 14), and we do not knowingly serve ads to children or use child-directed ad settings.

7. Third-party services we do use

To keep pages fast, two libraries are loaded from a public content delivery network only when they are needed:

Chart.js, loaded from cdnjs.cloudflare.com when a page renders a chart.
jsPDF and jsPDF-AutoTable, loaded from the same network only when you request a PDF report.

Google Analytics also loads a script from googletagmanager.com and sends measurement data to Google's servers, as described in section 5.

Loading a file from a content delivery network necessarily reveals your IP address and browser user agent to that network, as it does for any resource requested from any server. No calculator data is sent — the libraries run in your browser on data that stays there.

Form submissions are processed by a script on our own hosting. If we ever move form handling to a third-party service, this policy will be updated to name it.

8. PDF report generation

Reports are built entirely in your browser using the libraries above. The finished file is saved directly to your device. No copy is created on any server, and we never see the contents.

9. How we use the information we do collect

To reply to your message or consultation request
To provide a service you have asked for
To send you occasional updates about new calculators, where you have consented — with an unsubscribe link in every message
To maintain the security and integrity of the site
To comply with legal obligations

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

10. Disclosure of information

We disclose personal information only to service providers who process it on our behalf under appropriate obligations (for example, our hosting provider), where required by law or valid legal process, or to protect our rights, safety or property.

11. Retention

Contact form messages — kept for as long as needed to handle your enquiry and for a reasonable period afterwards for reference.
Registration records — kept until you ask us to delete them or until they are no longer needed.
Consultation requests and uploaded documents — kept only as long as needed for the engagement you requested, then deleted.
Server logs — retained according to our hosting provider's standard configuration.

12. Security

The site is served over HTTPS. Form submissions are validated and sanitised on the server, and any uploaded documents are stored outside the publicly accessible web directory with direct access blocked at the web server level.

We will not describe this site as "bank-level secure" or make similar claims, because no independent assessment has been carried out to support them. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. Please do not send us information more sensitive than the situation requires.

13. Your rights

You may ask us to tell you what personal information we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, or to stop sending you email. Use the contact form and choose "Privacy or data request". We will verify your identity in a proportionate way before acting.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state privacy laws, including rights of access, correction, deletion and portability, and a right not to be discriminated against for exercising them. We honour these requests regardless of where you live.

We cannot delete calculator inputs, because we never had them.

14. Children

This site is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has submitted information to us, contact us and we will delete it.

15. International users

This site is intended for users in the United States, and its content reflects United States rules. If you access it from elsewhere, you do so on your own initiative and information you submit will be processed in the United States.

16. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when our practices change, and always before introducing a service that collects additional information. The current version and its date are published here.

17. Contact

Privacy questions and requests can be sent through the contact form, or directly to the details below.

SmartFinClub
Glen Allen, Virginia, United States
Email: Info@smartfinclub.com
Phone: 804-699-0612