I copy-pasted my bank statements into ChatGPT — and immediately regretted it
I built Ask Linc after pasting bank statements into ChatGPT and hoping no one would see 🫣
A few months ago, I got laid off.
I turned to ChatGPT (which I use all the time) to help figure out what that meant for our finances:
How long could we go without touching savings?
Could we still retire when we planned?
Are we actually okay — or just hoping for the best?
ChatGPT gave me general tips, but it had no idea how much we had saved, what our monthly burn rate was, or how the layoff might delay retirement. So I spent hours uploading spreadsheets, pasting in screenshots, writing long prompts… and constantly wondering:
“Is this even safe?” (It wasn't.)
That experience was helpful but clunky. Smart, but not private. So I built the thing I wished existed:
🚀 Ask Linc — a privacy-first AI financial assistant
It connects to your financial accounts (via Plaid), pulls in real-time market data, and gives you clear, judgment-free answers based on your actual financial picture — not made-up assumptions.
No dashboards. No spreadsheets. Just answers that make sense.
🔐 How we protect your data:
Read-only access via Plaid (SOC 2 compliant) — we never see your credentials
Anonymized data — we strip out names, institutions, and merchant info before anything goes near GPT
Encryption at rest and in transit (AES-256 + TLS)
No AI training — your data is never used to train OpenAI models
One-click data deletion — you have total control, no dark patterns
We're in private beta and bringing in early users. If you've ever asked ChatGPT a money question and wished it actually knew your context — I'd love your feedback.
Ask Linc is what I needed. Maybe it's what you need too.
Happy to answer questions about the stack, onboarding, or what I’m learning as I go.
