Last updated: August 17, 2026
Jacobus Company, LLC ("Company," "we," "us," or "our") built Retirement Scenario Lab (the "Service") as a privacy-respecting educational financial-modeling tool. This Policy explains what we collect, what we don't, how the Service works today, and what we commit to if it changes. Our guiding principle is data minimization: collect as little as possible, and keep your modeling on your own device wherever we practically can.
We have written this Policy to be accurate about today and honest about tomorrow. Section 7 describes how the Service could grow over time and the commitments we make about any such change, so that nothing later comes as a surprise.
Please treat the Service as a learning sandbox, not a vault. It is an ordinary web page running on your own device, not a login-protected secure system. We ask you to use round, hypothetical figures and to leave out names, account numbers, and other personal specifics. Ballpark numbers produce the same insight, and this keeps your risk close to zero no matter what happens anywhere else.
To be precise about what leaves your device as the Service works today:
a. Financial assumptions and inputs ("Scenario Figures"). The returns, inflation rates, allocation percentages, contribution and withdrawal amounts, and similar figures you enter. These stay on your device, in your browser's local storage, and are not transmitted to or stored by us. They are yours; we do not receive them, and we would only ever receive them through a feature you deliberately turn on (see Section 7).
b. Email address, and only if you choose to give it. The free tool does not require an account and does not ask for your name or email in order to work. We collect your email only if you (i) opt in to product updates through our optional signup form, or (ii) purchase Pro. We use it to send the updates you asked for and to deliver and support your purchase. You can unsubscribe at any time, and doing so does not affect your use of the tool.
c. Purchase and license information. If you buy Pro, our payment provider handles the transaction and issues a license key. We receive a record that a purchase occurred and the information needed to support it. Because a Pro license permits a limited number of device activations, validating your key also records that an activation occurred, along with basic technical details about the activation. We do not receive or store your full payment card details — those are handled by the payment provider.
d. Standard server logs. Our hosting and content-delivery provider processes standard server request logs (such as IP address, timestamp, and user-agent/browser type), as is typical for any website, to deliver, operate, and secure the Service. These logs do not contain your Scenario Figures.
We do not intentionally collect sensitive personal information (such as Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, government IDs, or health information), and you should not enter such information into the Service.
The following summarizes the categories of personal information we may collect, consistent with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA). We do not sell your personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
| Category | Source | Purpose | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identifiers — email address (only if you opt in or purchase) | You | Deliver the updates you asked for; deliver and support your purchase | Kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it |
| Commercial information — purchase and license record | You / our payment provider | Verify and activate your Pro license; support the purchase | Kept as long as needed for the purchase and to meet tax, accounting, and legal obligations |
| Internet or network activity — standard server logs (IP, timestamp, user-agent); license activation and validation records | Your device / browser | Deliver, operate, and secure the site; enforce the device limit on a Pro license | Kept only as long as needed for that purpose or as required by law |
As the Service works today, if you never opt into email and never purchase Pro, the only information generated is the ordinary server log created by loading any web page, and your Scenario Figures are not collected. If that ever changes, we will update this table first, as described in Section 7.
We use the limited information we hold to:
We do not use your information to provide personalized financial advice, we do not sell it, and we do not profile you for advertising.
The Service uses your browser's local storage to keep your scenarios and preferences on your device — for example, to remember a saved scenario, your settings, and that you accepted the Terms. This is essential to how the tool works and, as the Service works today, is not transmitted to us.
We do not use advertising cookies or cross-site tracking cookies. Our hosting and content-delivery provider may set strictly necessary cookies and process standard request logs as described above. If we later introduce measurement or analytics, we will describe it in this Policy and honor the choices described in Section 7 and Section 11. You can clear local storage and block or delete cookies in your browser at any time; clearing local storage will remove your saved scenarios.
We do not sell your personal information. We share it only:
We intend to keep improving this tool for a long time, and useful products evolve. Rather than promise the Service will never change, we would rather tell you now what could change and hold ourselves to clear commitments about how any change would happen.
What we may add over time. We may introduce optional features that work differently from today's purely local design — for example an optional account, optional backup or synchronization of your scenarios across your own devices, optional sharing of a scenario with someone you choose, product analytics or usage measurement, in-app support tools, an optional assistant or explanation feature, or versions built for teams, advisors, or educators. We may also add, change, or replace the service providers described in Section 6, and we may offer the Service in additional countries.
Our commitments if we do. For any change of that kind:
Your options. If you do not agree with a change, you may stop using the Service, unsubscribe from email, and ask us to delete the information we hold. Because your scenarios live on your own device, you can export them first and keep them regardless of what we do.
We may create and use aggregated or de-identified information — statistics and insights that cannot reasonably be used to identify you or any individual, such as how many people use a given feature or what time horizons are commonly modeled. We may use this to operate and improve the Service, to produce educational or marketing material, and to describe usage publicly. We will maintain such information in de-identified form and will not attempt to re-identify it, except as needed to test that the de-identification works.
Because your scenario activity is client-side, it stays in your browser until you clear it, and you control that entirely. For the limited data we hold:
The most effective protection we can offer you is the one already built in: we deliberately hold very little personal information, and as the Service works today your scenario figures are not among it. In addition, the site is served over HTTPS, and the limited data we do hold sits with established third-party providers who maintain their own security programs.
No website, system, or provider can be completely secure, and we don't claim otherwise. You are responsible for the security of your own device and browser; on a shared or public computer, keep your inputs hypothetical or use a private browsing window.
If we become aware of a security incident affecting personal information we hold, we will act promptly to address it and will provide any notice that applicable law requires. Most of the limited data described in this Policy is held by the providers in Section 6; where an incident originates with one of them, that provider is responsible for detecting it and notifying us, and we will pass along the information we receive. Our liability in connection with any security incident is limited as set out in the Terms of Service.
A note on where you live. The Service is operated from the United States and is offered primarily to users in the United States; Pro licenses are currently sold to US customers. Anyone is welcome to use the free tool from anywhere, and we have written this Policy to be fair wherever you are. Accordingly, if you write to us from any country to ask for access, correction, deletion, or a copy of the information we hold about you, we will honor that request in good faith — whether or not that country's law technically applies to us. We think that is simply the right way to treat people, and it costs us little because we hold so little. So that this stays workable for a very small company, we may need to verify that a request is really yours, and we may decline requests that are repetitive, excessive, unfounded, or that we are legally required to refuse — if we decline, we will tell you why.
California residents (CCPA/CPRA). You have the rights described above, including the right to know, delete, correct, and to limit the use of sensitive personal information. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CCPA/CPRA, so no "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link is required; if that ever changed we would provide one and honor Global Privacy Control signals. You may use an authorized agent to submit a request.
EEA, UK, and Switzerland. We do not target or market the Service in these regions and do not offer Pro there today, so we do not believe the GDPR or UK GDPR applies to us. If they do apply, or if you simply write to us, we will honor the core rights described above. Where we process personal information, our legal bases are: performance of a contract (delivering and supporting a Pro license), consent (optional email updates, which you may withdraw at any time), and our legitimate interests (operating, securing, and improving the Service). Information we hold is processed in the United States; where a transfer mechanism such as the Standard Contractual Clauses applies, we or our providers rely on it.
The Service is a general-audience educational tool, and using it requires you to be at least 18, or the age of majority where you live (see the Terms of Service). It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 — and specifically not from children under 13, consistent with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"). Any description of the tool as simple enough for a young adult refers to its ease of use, not an intent to reach minors. If you believe a minor has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.
We may update this Policy from time to time. We will post the revised version with a new "Last updated" date, and for material changes we will follow the notice commitments in Section 7. Changes apply going forward from their effective date. We encourage you to review this page when you return to the Service.
For any privacy question, to exercise a right, or to request our current list of service providers:
Jacobus Company, LLC scenario-labs@julieclarkson.com
We aim to respond to every privacy request promptly, and always within the time applicable law requires.
This Privacy Policy should be read together with the Retirement Scenario Lab Terms of Service and Disclaimer.