Disclaimer: Moves, offers and calculators

Educational, not advice

Ample is software. It reads your accounts with your permission, does arithmetic on the numbers, and shows its work. Everything it produces — verdicts, budgets, paycheck plans, projections, Moves, calculators on this website, and the letters it drafts — is educational and informational. It is not individualized financial, investment, tax, credit or legal advice, and it is not a substitute for a professional who knows your situation. You make the decisions and carry them out at your own institutions. Ample never moves your money.

What a Move is

A Move is a suggestion with a dollar figure and the arithmetic behind it, found in your own data: a recurring charge that rose, savings earning less than a published rate, a card balance timed to report high, mortgage insurance you may be able to cancel, a debt payoff order, a consolidation route that would cost less in total.

• The figure is an estimate computed from your data and stated assumptions. Where it depends on something outside your data (a rate, an offer, a servicer’s policy), the card names the source and the date it was checked.
• Approving a Move is your decision. Ample records your approval and either changes something inside your own plan, gives you a checklist, or drafts a letter. It does not act at your bank, your card issuer, your utility or your servicer.
• The Found-so-far ledger records what you completed at the amounts the arithmetic supports, with your corrections. It is a history, not a promise, and not a claim about the future.

How offers and outside products are shown

Sometimes the cheapest route involves a product Ample does not provide: a savings account with a higher rate, a personal loan, a balance transfer.

• Ample is paid by you. It takes no referral fees, commissions, kickbacks or advertising from any bank, lender, card issuer or other company, and none of them pay to appear. If a Move mentions an institution, it is because that institution published the rate the arithmetic used.
• Rates are published figures, not offers to you. Ample looks up rates from lenders’ public pages for your stated credit band at scan time. Your actual offer may differ. Every such Move carries a verify-before-acting note asking you to confirm rate, fees and term in writing before moving a dollar.
• The full cost is shown. Comparisons include interest and fees over the whole payoff, not the monthly payment alone. A route that lowers the payment but costs more in total is not shown as a Move.
• Ranking is by your dollars, monthly impact first, then one-time. Nothing else changes the order.

Credit and utilization

Statements about credit utilization (for example, reporting under 30% or 10% of your limit) describe how widely used scoring models generally treat reported balances. They are not a guarantee of any score change. Scores depend on many factors and on each bureau’s data. Paying before a statement closes changes what is reported; paying by the due date avoids interest and fees. Neither is a promise about your score.

Mortgage insurance and the law

Statements about cancelling private mortgage insurance summarize the Homeowners Protection Act of 1998 and common investor servicing guidelines. They are general information, not legal advice, and your loan documents and servicer’s requirements control. FHA, VA and lender-paid mortgage insurance follow different rules.

Projections and calculators

Forecasts, long-range projections and the calculators on this website are arithmetic on assumptions you can see and change: growth rates, inflation, payment amounts, dates. They are directional, not predictions. Actual results will differ. Calculators on this website run in your browser and store nothing.

Accuracy of data

Ample relies on data from your financial institutions through Plaid and on information you enter. Institutions delay, restate and occasionally misreport transactions; a wrong home value or bill amount you enter propagates into every figure that uses it. Check important numbers against your statements before acting on them.

Changes

We will post changes here with a new effective date. Questions: the Contact page.