How to leave a finance app without leaving your data behind

Step 1: export what you want to keep

Do this first, because the later steps may remove your access. Look in settings for an export or download option and save your transactions, budgets and anything you entered by hand. CSV files open in any spreadsheet and are the most useful format for moving to another tool.

Check the export before moving on. Open the file and make sure the date range covers what you expect.

Step 2: disconnect your banks

In the app's settings, remove every linked bank. A well-built app cancels the connection at the connection service when you do this, so the token that reads your accounts stops working.

Doing this as its own step, before deleting the account, means you are not relying on the deletion to clean up connections correctly.

Step 3: cancel the subscription where you bought it

Deleting an account does not always stop billing. If you subscribed through the App Store or Google Play, the subscription belongs to your Apple or Google account, and only you can cancel it there, in your phone's subscription settings. If you subscribed on the web, cancel in the app's billing settings.

This is the step people most often miss, and it is how someone ends up paying for an app months after they stopped using it.

Step 4: delete the account, not just the app

Find the delete account option in settings. If there is none, the privacy policy should say how to request deletion, and in many places the law gives you the right to ask. Note what the app says deletion covers and whether anything is kept, such as records it must hold for legal reasons.

Only after this should you remove the app from your phone.

Step 5: confirm nothing is still connected

• Check Plaid's consumer portal at my.plaid.com to see whether the app still appears among your connections, and remove it if it does.
• Check your bank's connected apps or third-party access page, if it has one.
• Look at your next card or bank statement for a charge from the app.
• If the app had a connector to an AI assistant, remove that connector in the assistant's settings too.

If you can no longer sign in

Old accounts are often tied to an email address or password you no longer remember. Try the password reset first. If that fails, look for a way to request deletion without signing in, or write to the company's privacy contact from the email address on the account. Meanwhile, the bank side is still under your control: Plaid's portal and your bank's own settings can cut the connection without the app's help.

How leaving My AI Fin App works

Export is in settings: one ZIP file with a spreadsheet for each kind of data, the same data as JSON, and a README explaining the files. Deleting your account is a button, not a support ticket. It disconnects your banks at Plaid, deletes your data and your profile picture, and removes your sign-in.

If you cannot sign in to the app, the delete account page on the website lets you confirm with a code sent to your email address instead. A Pro plan paid on the website is cancelled as part of the deletion. A subscription bought through the App Store or Google Play still has to be cancelled in your phone's subscription settings, because only you can do that.