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MacMoney has no accounts of ours, no server of ours and no analytics. This page explains exactly what that means: the two network requests the app can make, and the optional iPhone Sync that runs through your own iCloud.
That is the whole policy, and the rest of this page is just the detail behind it. MacMoney has no user accounts, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. We never receive your financial information, and we could not read it if we wanted to.
Nothing. There is no registration step, no telemetry, no crash reporting service and no third-party SDK of any kind inside the app. We do not know who installs MacMoney, how often it is opened, or what is in it.
Everything you enter is stored in a database file on your own Mac, inside Apple's App Sandbox, with file permissions that restrict it to your macOS user account. Backups and archives you create are written to whatever location you choose. None of it is uploaded to us or to anyone else. If you turn on iPhone Sync, a copy also lives in your own private iCloud database — see below — and nowhere besides.
On iPhone, MacMoney keeps your ledger in a database on the iPhone itself, inside the app’s sandbox. If the iPhone is signed in to iCloud, the ledger is also kept in your own private iCloud database, so your devices can share it; signed out, it stays on the iPhone alone. Demo accounts you load on the iPhone are kept in a separate store on the device that never syncs anywhere.
MacMoney makes two kinds of network request, plus an optional sync you can switch on. All three are optional, and none of them happens unless you ask for it.
When you choose Refresh Rates — or, if you turn it on, once a day when the app opens — MacMoney fetches published exchange rates from open.er-api.com, the free service of ExchangeRate-API. That request contains no information about you, your accounts or your transactions — it is the same public request any visitor to that address makes.
When you press Refresh prices on the Investments screen, the app sends the ticker symbols of the holdings shown there — AAPL, VTI and the like — to finnhub.io, because sending the symbol is the only way to be quoted a price for it. That request carries the symbols and your own Finnhub API key, which is how Finnhub identifies your account with them. It carries nothing else: no balances, no share counts, no cost basis, no account names and no transactions. Stock refresh is inert until you add a Finnhub key of your own, and that key is stored in your Mac’s Keychain rather than in the MacMoney file, so it never travels inside a backup or an export. The iPhone app does not fetch stock prices.
As with any website you visit, ExchangeRate-API and Finnhub see the internet (IP) address a request comes from, and they handle it under their own privacy policies. Neither request passes through us, and we receive nothing from either service.
iPhone Sync, when you turn it on in Settings, mirrors your data between your Mac and MacMoney for iPhone through CloudKit — the private database attached to your own Apple Account — and through nothing else. We operate no sync server and hold no copy; Apple encrypts the data in transit and at rest under your account, and it is not readable by us. Sync is off by default, MacMoney writes a backup before the first sync, and you can turn it off at any time. The iPhone stores its data the way the Mac stores its file: sandboxed, on the device.
Deleting your iCloud copy. On your Mac, open MacMoney’s Settings › iPhone Sync and choose Delete iCloud Data…. That removes the synced copy from your private iCloud database; each device keeps its own local data until you delete the app or its data on that device. Because the copy lives in your own Apple Account, we cannot delete it for you — and we have never had it.
Everything else in MacMoney works with no network connection at all.
A receipt you scan or choose is attached to its transaction in your ledger, at receipt size. It stays on your iPhone and, if iCloud sync is on, in your own private iCloud with the rest of the ledger. It is never sent to us. The camera is used only while you are scanning a receipt.
The optional app lock uses Face ID or your passcode through iOS. Apple handles the check on the device; MacMoney is told only whether it succeeded and never receives your face data or your passcode. Bill reminders and low-balance alerts are scheduled on the iPhone itself, not sent from a server.
Your data file is readable only by your own macOS user account and is isolated from other apps by Apple's App Sandbox. If you enable FileVault, macOS encrypts your entire disk with AES-256, which covers MacMoney's file along with everything else. MacMoney does not add a separate encryption layer or password of its own, and we would rather tell you that than imply otherwise.
If iPhone Sync is on, the synced copy is encrypted by Apple in transit and at rest inside your own iCloud account, under keys tied to your Apple Account rather than to us. We hold no key and no copy.
A few screens in MacMoney offer an optional link to lonestarba.com — for example, to request an insurance coverage review. Those links open in your normal browser, and once you are here this website's own practices apply. Nothing from inside the app travels with you; if you contact us, you tell us what you want us to know.
The Financial Checkup questionnaire and the written assessment it produces are generated on your Mac and stay there. Your answers are never transmitted — they are held in your Mac's own preferences rather than in the MacMoney data file, so they are not part of what iPhone Sync mirrors and they never reach iCloud. You can revise or clear them at any time. It is an educational tool with stated assumptions, based on United States retirement and tax rules, and it is not a personalised investment advisory service.
MacMoney is not directed at children, and collects no data from anyone regardless of age.
If MacMoney gains a feature that changes any of the above, this page is updated before that feature ships, and the change is described here rather than buried.
That has now happened once. The previous version of this page named “optional cloud sync” as the hypothetical example; iPhone Sync shipped in August 2026, and the Network access section above was rewritten for it in the same release rather than afterwards.
In October 2026, before MacMoney for iPhone could keep a ledger on its own, this page gained how the iPhone stores your data, the section on receipts and Face ID, the exchange-rate provider’s exact address, what Finnhub and ExchangeRate-API can see, and how to delete your iCloud copy.