Our approach
Every feature in Greenline exists because of a belief about how your finances should work. Here's what we think.
Our approach
Why we've built things the way we have.
Why we don't link your bank account
Most portfolio trackers ask you to connect your bank account directly. It's convenient. But there are trade-offs worth understanding before you do. We used Mint for years before realizing linking our bank accounts could void our fraud protection. That's when we went back to spreadsheets, and eventually built something better.
Security is only part of the problem. Bank connectors are also unreliable. They break constantly, show wrong balances, miss transactions, and leave you with data you can't trust. And they're expensive. The companies that provide them charge per connection, and those costs get passed on to you through higher subscription fees. Every app that links your bank is paying for that convenience, and so are you.
When you share your banking credentials with a third-party app, your bank's fraud protection may no longer cover you. It can break your account agreement, and your bank may hold you responsible for unauthorized transactions. We decided early on that convenience wasn't worth that trade.
Instead, you upload your statements yourself. CSV exports, PDFs, even screenshots. It takes a few minutes instead of a few seconds. But your bank guarantees stay intact, your credentials stay with you, and your data doesn't pass through a third-party connector.
We show, we don't tell.
Greenline will show you that a fund charges 1.2% in fees. It will show you a similar fund that charges 0.2%. But it won't tell you to switch. That decision is yours, and it should be.
Information, not instructions.
There's a difference between "you're paying $400 a year in fees you might not need to" and "sell this fund and buy that one." The first gives you something to think about. The second assumes we know your situation better than you do. We don't. Friends have offered to pay us to manage their money, some suggesting rates as high as 5% without knowing whether that was reasonable. That's the problem. Fees are hard to evaluate without context, and that context is rarely provided. We'd rather show you the numbers and let you decide.