Help · Support

Support

Festina Lente

Carpe Money is made by one person, and support is a real person answering email — not a queue, not a bot.

support@carpemoney.app

Most questions get an answer within a day. If something is broken and money is on the line, say so in the subject line and it goes to the front.

Email support

Getting started

How do I start?

Create an account with your email and a password, confirm the emailed link, and you are in. The first run walks you through connecting a bank (or entering accounts by hand), telling Carpe what you usually earn, and picking a savings plan. It takes a few minutes — and you can skip any step and come back to it.

Do I need a card to try it?

No. Every new account gets 30 days of the complete app with no card and no trial-ware. Nothing is switched off during the trial and nothing is held back for a paid tier — there is only one version of Carpe Money.

What happens when the 30 days end?

If you have not subscribed, your account becomes read-only. You can still open it and look at everything; you cannot add or edit, and linked banks stop syncing. Your data is not deleted and never held hostage — subscribe whenever you like and everything picks up where it was.

Your data

Do you see my transactions?

No, and this is built into how the app works rather than promised in a policy.

  • Bank data is never stored on our server. When you open Carpe Money, balances and transactions are fetched live from your bank through Plaid, cached on your device, and all the maths — budgets, charts, projections — happens there. Once you close the app, there is nothing on our side to read.
  • Anything you type in is end-to-end encrypted. Manual accounts and transactions are encrypted on your device with a key derived from your password. We store only ciphertext. We cannot read it, and neither could anyone who compelled or breached us.
So what do you actually hold?

Your email address, your encrypted secrets, your settings, and the rules you have set up. That is the whole list.

Can I get my data out?

Yes. Open Activity, tap Export, and choose CSV or Excel. It is your data; leaving should be as easy as arriving.

Banks and accounts

How do I connect a bank?

Accounts → Connect Bank. Carpe uses Plaid, the same connection layer used by most banks. You enter your bank credentials with your bank, not with us — we never see them.

My bank asked me to sign in again.

Banks expire these connections periodically; it is normal and not a sign anything is wrong. Carpe Money shows a reconnect prompt on the account. Tap it and you will be walked back through your bank.

My bank will not connect.

A few banks do not work with Plaid at all, and some fail only through certain sign-in methods. Two things to try: reconnect from a different device, and check whether your bank requires approval in its own app first. If it still fails, email us with your bank's name — we track which institutions are causing trouble.

Can I track something that is not a bank account — cash, a car, a loan from a friend?

Yes. Add it as a manual account and enter transactions yourself. Manual data is the end-to-end-encrypted kind, so it is the most private data in the app.

How far back does my history go?

Up to two years, depending on what your bank releases. Banks differ, and the window is fixed by your bank when the connection is first made — so an account connected today may hold less history than one connected a year ago, which keeps accruing.

Alerts

What are alerts?

Rules you set — a spending limit for a category, a window of time — that email you when you cross them. They are meant to arrive while you can still do something about it, not in a monthly summary after the fact.

Why have I not received one?

Check the rule is enabled and its window is what you expect, then check your spam folder. If a rule shows spending in the app but no email arrived, tell us — that is a bug on our side, not something for you to debug.

Recurring charges

What does Recurring do?

It finds the charges that repeat — subscriptions, memberships, utilities — and shows what is still committed for the month, so the money you have left is the money you can actually spend.

Something is marked recurring that is not.

Open it and turn it off; the rule stops matching. The reverse works too: mark a charge as recurring and Carpe Money will track it going forward.

Sharing with a partner

Can two people share a budget?

Yes. Invite them from Settings and you both see the same accounts, rules, and history, each with your own sign-in. There is no extra charge for a second person — a household is one budget.

What happens if we split up?

Either of you can leave the household. Leaving gives you your own separate account; it does not delete the other person's.

Signing in and security

What are my sign-in options?

Email and password, plus a second step. The second step can be a code from an authenticator app, a link emailed to you, or a passkey — Face ID or Touch ID on a device that supports it. Passkeys are the fastest and most secure.

I have lost my second factor.

Use one of the recovery codes you were given when you set up your account. Each works once. If those are gone too, email us — expect us to be careful and a little slow about it, because the alternative is a system where someone else can talk their way into your data.

I forgot my password.

Use the reset link on the sign-in page. Note that resetting your password still requires your second step — an email alone never gets into an account.

Paying

What does it cost?

$7.99 a month. Or pay for a year and name your tribute, starting at $39.99.

Why can I choose the annual price?

Because the floor should not price anyone out, and the people who can pay more keep Carpe Money independent, private, and ad-free. Every amount buys the identical, complete app — the difference is support, never features.

What is Annona?

A tribute at the Senator level covers a full free year for another community member who cannot pay. They get the same complete app, with no marker on their account and no way for anyone to tell. Excellent tools for managing money should not be only for people having a good year.

How do I cancel?

From your billing settings, any time. You keep access through the end of the period you paid for, and then the account goes read-only rather than disappearing.

Do I get a refund if I cancel early?

Email us. If Carpe Money did not do what you needed, we are not going to argue about a month.

Leaving

How do I delete my account?

Settings → Delete account. It removes your budget, your rules, your encrypted data, and cancels any subscription in the same step. It is immediate and cannot be undone.

Is it really gone?

From the live system, yes. It will persist for a while in encrypted backups, which are immutable on purpose so that ransomware cannot destroy other members' data — and your manual financial data stays end-to-end encrypted inside those too, with no key held by us.

Something is broken

Email support@carpemoney.app. A real person reads it.

Please do not send passwords, recovery codes, or bank credentials. Nobody at Carpe Money will ever ask you for them.

What helps most
  • What you were doing, and what happened instead
  • Roughly when it happened
  • The device and browser, or that you were in the app
  • A screenshot, if there is something to see