Terms of Service

1. Agreeing to These Terms

Invest Ahead ("Invest Ahead", "the Service", "we", "us") is an app for learning about investing and planning your own investments: logging contributions, setting goals and a target mix, and, if you choose, viewing a linked brokerage account. These terms are an agreement between you and us. By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to them, to our Privacy Policy and to our Investing Disclaimer. If you don’t agree, please don’t use the Service.

2. Who Can Use Invest Ahead

• You must be at least 18 years old, and old enough to enter a binding contract where you live (the age of majority, if it’s higher).
• You can’t use the Service if the law where you live doesn’t allow it.

3. Your Account

• Give us a real email address you can get to, and keep your password to yourself.
• You’re responsible for what happens on your account. Tell us right away if you think someone else has used it.
• One person per account. Don’t create accounts for other people or by automated means.

4. Not Financial Advice

Invest Ahead is an educational and personal-planning tool. We are not a broker-dealer, investment adviser, financial planner, tax adviser, bank or fiduciary, and we aren’t registered as any of these with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA, any state, or any other regulator.

• Nothing in the Service is a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy, sell or hold any security, fund, cryptocurrency or other investment, or to use any particular account or strategy.
• Guides, the investing tour, account-type explanations, examples, calculators, projections, “If I add $X” arithmetic, target mixes and insights are general information. They don’t take your full financial situation, goals or risk tolerance into account.
• Tax rules, contribution limits and figures change and differ by person and place. Check current rules with the IRS or your local tax authority, or a qualified professional.
• Before you make an investment decision, consider talking with a licensed financial professional. Using the Service doesn’t create an adviser, fiduciary or other professional relationship between you and us.

The Investing Disclaimer explains this in more detail and is part of these terms.

5. Your Decisions and Your Risk

All investing involves risk, including the loss of the money you put in. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. You alone decide whether, when, where and how to invest, and you accept full responsibility for those decisions and their results, including any gains, losses, taxes, fees or penalties. Invest Ahead never places trades, moves money or holds assets for you.

6. Linked Accounts and Third-Party Data

• Linking a brokerage or retirement account is optional and works through Plaid, a third-party service. You sign in through Plaid’s window, under Plaid’s own terms and privacy policy. We never see your brokerage password.
• Linked access is read-only. Invest Ahead can’t trade, transfer or withdraw anything from your accounts.
• Balances, holdings, prices and transactions come from your institution through Plaid. They may be delayed, incomplete or wrong, and we don’t control or guarantee them. Your institution’s own statements are the official record: check important numbers there before you rely on them.
• We aren’t responsible for Plaid, your institution, or any other third-party service, or for their availability, accuracy or practices.

7. Your Content

• It’s yours. You keep ownership of everything you add: plans, contributions, holdings, goals, notes and your reasons for each buy.
• What you let us do with it. You give us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free permission to store, copy, process and show your content, only to run the Service for you. It ends when you delete the content or your account, apart from short-lived backups (see the Privacy Policy).
• Don’t store secrets. Invest Ahead isn’t a password manager or a vault. Don’t put passwords, PINs, full account numbers or Social Security numbers in your notes or other content.

8. Using Invest Ahead Fairly

Please don’t:

• break the law, or use Invest Ahead to deceive, defraud or harm anyone;
• link or view accounts you aren’t authorized to access;
• try to get into accounts or data that aren’t yours, or test, probe or get around our security;
• scrape, overload or disrupt the Service, or reverse-engineer it, except where the law allows;
• resell the Service, or use it to build a competing product.

9. Changes, Suspension and Ending

• We may add, change or remove features. We’ll give notice in the app when a change takes away something important.
• You can stop using Invest Ahead at any time, and delete your account in Settings. That also unlinks any connected accounts.
• We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, puts others or the Service at risk, or when the law requires it. Where it’s safe and lawful, we’ll tell you why.
• Sections 4, 5, 6 and 10 to 14 continue after your account ends.

10. The Service Is Provided "As Is"

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, non-infringement, or uninterrupted or error-free operation. We don’t promise that calculations, projections, imported data or educational content will be correct, complete or current, that the Service will always be available, or that data will never be lost. Keep your own records of anything important.

11. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

• We aren’t liable for any investment losses, missed gains, taxes, fees or penalties, or for any decision you make or don’t make based on the Service.
• We aren’t liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, goodwill or other intangible losses, arising from or related to the Service or these terms, whatever the legal theory (contract, tort including negligence, or otherwise), even if we were told such damages were possible.
• We aren’t liable for the acts, omissions or data of Plaid, your financial institutions or other third parties.
• Our total liability for all claims relating to the Service or these terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or (b) US$50.

Some places don’t allow certain warranties to be excluded or liability to be limited. Where that’s the case, these limits apply only as far as the law allows. Nothing in these terms limits liability that can’t legally be limited, such as for fraud, gross negligence or willful misconduct, or takes away rights you have as a consumer that can’t be waived.

12. Indemnity

To the extent the law allows, you agree to defend and compensate us for claims, losses and reasonable costs (including legal fees) that third parties bring against us because of your content, your misuse of the Service, or your breaking these terms or the law.

13. Disagreements

If something goes wrong, please contact us first (section 15). Most problems can be sorted out quickly that way, and we’ll try in good faith for at least 30 days before either of us takes formal action. Either of us may still bring a claim in small-claims court if it qualifies. If you’re a consumer, you keep any right the law gives you to bring a claim where you live.

14. General

• These terms, the Privacy Policy and the Investing Disclaimer are the whole agreement between us about the Service.
• If any part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce a part of these terms right away, we can still enforce it later.
• You can’t transfer these terms to someone else. We may transfer them as part of a merger, sale or reorganization, as long as your rights under them and under the Privacy Policy continue.
• Neither of us is responsible for delays caused by events beyond reasonable control.

15. Changes to These Terms and Contact

We may update these terms as Invest Ahead changes. The date at the top shows the latest version. For a significant change, we’ll let you know in the app or by email at least 14 days before it takes effect, unless it’s needed sooner for legal or safety reasons. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, you accept the new terms. If you don’t, you can delete your account.

Questions, or a legal notice? Email support@helmlife.app.