Frequently Asked Questions

Yes — there is a free plan for households with up to 2 members — unlimited accounts, unlimited transactions, core reports and ten of the twenty-four Decision Lab analyses. No credit card required. The paid Household plan is $7.99 a month or $79 a year — about 18% off for paying yearly — and adds the other fourteen analyses, unlimited recurring rules, household budgets and reports, and up to 5 members.

No. HelloMula is a manual-entry system. You enter your own account balances, transactions, and financial data. We never ask for your bank login, and we have no connection to any financial institution. This is by design — it keeps your sensitive credentials completely private and under your control.

Most households are up and running in minutes. A guided Setup Guide walks you from sign-up to a working dashboard in about five minutes — accounts, opening balances, and your first recurring bills. After that, the Guides hub offers short walkthroughs for everything else: importing past months, setting up debt payoff, touring the reports, and more.

No. HelloMula runs on summary-level entries, not receipts. The rhythm most households use: when a credit card statement arrives, log the payment you made, then add one line covering everything you charged that period. Two entries, twice a month.

Your recurring income and bills — paychecks, rent or mortgage, utilities, subscriptions — post themselves automatically once you set them up, so those never need touching.

Receipt-level detail is fully supported if you want it. Most households don't need it, because every analysis in HelloMula works from monthly totals. See a full month, start to finish.

▶ Watch Tutorial 3: Track Your Money in 10 Minutes a Month: Recording Transactions (2:44)

About ten minutes for most households, spread across the two or three moments you already sit down to pay bills. You're not starting a new habit — you're adding a couple of entries to one you already have.

It's also self-checking: because you're recording what a statement already tells you, your balance in HelloMula should match your balance at the bank. When it does, you know you're current.

Households that want category-level budgeting enter transactions individually instead, which takes meaningfully longer.

▶ Watch Tutorial 11: Put Bills and Paychecks on a Schedule: Recurring Transactions (5:01)

Honestly: your analyses drift. Decision Lab prefills from a six-month average of your income and expenses, so a long gap means those averages describe a household you no longer are — and the results will still look confident while being out of date.

Catching up is straightforward. The Keeping HelloMula Current guide lets you enter monthly totals for any months you missed, and your reports and analyses recover immediately.

Your account balances, goals and net worth history are never lost — only the recent averages go stale.

▶ Watch Tutorial 12: Catch Up a Whole Month on One Page (2:46)

Absolutely. Creating a household doesn't mean you have to invite anyone else. Many people use HelloMula solo and add a partner or family member later. Nothing is held back from a household of one — the member limit is 2 on the free plan and 5 on Household, but every feature works the same either way.

You can track any account type: checking, savings, credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, investment accounts (401k, IRA, brokerage), auto loans, student loans, and more. You name the account and classify its type — HelloMula handles the rest.

▶ Watch Tutorial 2: Add Credit Cards, Loans and Investments to See Your Net Worth (2:30)

HelloMula supports four transaction types: Income, Expense, Transfer (between your accounts), and Debt Payment. Each can be categorized, noted, and assigned to specific accounts. You can also set up recurring versions of any transaction type.

Yes. Goals let you set a savings target — an emergency fund, a vacation, a down payment — and log contributions toward it over time. Goals can be personal or shared with your household, and household goals show each member's contributions so everyone can see progress toward the same target.

▶ Watch Tutorial 4: Your Money Dashboard and Your First Savings Goal (1:58)

Yes. You can download your data at any time, as a ZIP of CSV files, from the Privacy & Security tab of your profile. Your data always belongs to you.

No. In most households one person handles the money, and HelloMula is built for that rather than against it. One member can run everything — entering, editing and managing records on behalf of anyone who has granted them permission.

The other person chooses their own level of involvement: their own login and full participation, read-only visibility, the weekly summary email and nothing else, or no involvement at all. They can change their mind at any point, in either direction.

You get the complete picture either way. Nobody has to adopt a new app for the household to benefit.

▶ Watch Tutorial 7: See Your Household's Money Together: Views and Permissions (2:18)

Yes, with that person's permission — and only with it. From My Profile → Who Can Manage My Records, each member decides, for every other member, one of three levels: view only (the default), can add, or can manage.

Grants are per person, take effect immediately, and can be revoked in one click. Every change made on your behalf is logged and you're notified. Nobody — not a Primary User, not the person paying for the subscription — can grant themselves access to your records, and only you can delete your own accounts.

Full detail is on the User Guide.

▶ Watch Tutorial 7: See Your Household's Money Together: Views and Permissions (2:18)

Personal view shows only your own accounts and transactions. Household view shows a combined view of all household members' data, including any accounts marked as shared. You can switch between views at any time within the app.

There are two roles. Primary Users manage the household — billing, members, household budgets — and can switch into any member’s view to see their records. General Users manage their own records and see what is shared with them. Seeing is separate from changing: whatever the role, nobody can change your transactions or balances unless you grant them permission, and only you can delete your own accounts.

▶ Watch Tutorial 6: Add Your Partner or Family to a Shared Household (1:25)

Yes. A Primary User in your household can switch into your view and see the accounts and transactions you have entered. That is what makes the shared household picture — budgets, reports and net worth — add up correctly. We say so plainly on the invitation before you join, rather than leaving you to discover it afterwards.

Not unless you say so. Seeing and changing are separate permissions. From My Profile → Who Can Manage My Records you decide, for each household member, whether they can do nothing, add new transactions for you, or fully manage your records. The default is that nobody can change anything, you can revoke access at any time and it takes effect immediately, and only you can delete your own accounts — that is never something you can hand to someone else.

Go to Users in the app and enter their email address. They'll receive an invitation email with a link to create their account and join your household. You can resend invitations or revoke them at any time.

▶ Watch Tutorial 6: Add Your Partner or Family to a Shared Household (1:25)

HelloMula is new, and the first households who join are helping shape it. As a thank-you, 200 founding members keep today’s Household price — $7.99 a month or $79 a year — for as long as they stay subscribed. Switching between monthly and annual keeps your founding rate, and so does paying a missed invoice. If you cancel and come back later, the price at that time applies. See section 5.8 of our Terms of Use.

Yes. See our Refund Policy for full details. In general: annual subscriptions cancelled within the first 30 days get a prorated refund, and monthly subscriptions can be cancelled at any time — you keep Household features until the end of the month you have paid for, though the month itself is not refunded.

Paid plans are billed through Stripe, which accepts all major credit and debit cards. Payment information is handled entirely by Stripe — we never store your card details.

No. We do not sell your individual financial records or transaction history to any third party. Any use of data for marketing purposes (e.g., relevant financial product offers) is opt-in only and uses aggregated or anonymized data. See our Privacy Policy for complete details.

You can delete your account from your Profile page in the app.

Decision Lab is a suite of 24 guided financial analysis modules built into HelloMula. Each module reads from the accounts, transactions, and balances you've already entered and produces a clear calculated result — like your projected retirement date, the lower-interest debt payoff path, or a side-by-side cost comparison of buying vs. renting for your specific numbers. Learn more about Decision Lab →

▶ Watch Tutorial 5: Can I Afford This? Plan Ahead with the Decision Lab (2:16)

No. Decision Lab is a financial analysis tool — it performs calculations and presents results based on the data you've entered. It is not a licensed financial advisor and its output should not be treated as professional financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. See our Disclaimer for full details.

Ten of the twenty-four. The free plan deliberately includes every analysis tied to a decision you might be making right now: Should I Pay Off My Mortgage Early, How Much House Can I Afford, Buy vs Rent, Debt Payoff Strategy, Salary Benchmark, Career & Income Decision, College Savings Planning, Emergency Fund, Savings Rate and the Financial Health Dashboard.

The other fourteen are on the Household plan at $7.99 a month, or $79 a year. That includes the 1,000-scenario retirement projection — which grosses up every withdrawal for federal income tax rather than spending pre-tax dollars — plus the federal tax estimator, RMD scheduling, Roth and 401(k) modelling, financial freedom, insurance and vehicle analysis, and the deeper savings modules. See the full comparison table.