How Lirandel works, ranks and earns
Lirandel uses your own bank and card activity to find where you're losing money and where a better product would help. This page explains how, so you can check our work.
What Lirandel looks at
When you connect a bank through Plaid, Lirandel reads your accounts, balances, card statements and transactions. It doesn't see your bank password and can't move money. From that, it looks for:
- Card payments coming due, interest you're paying, and how much of your limit you use.
- A checking account heading toward an overdraft in the next 30 days, based on your paychecks and bills.
- Bank fees, including ones you could ask to have refunded.
- New subscriptions and price increases.
- Which of your cards earns most for each kind of spending, and cash that could earn more interest.
How Lirandel estimates savings
- No guessed numbers. If Lirandel doesn't know a rate or a fee, it says so and lets you enter it. When it has to assume something (like what a card point is worth), the assumption is shown next to the estimate, and you can change it.
- Only what really happened. Purchases and fees that were refunded, payments that bounced back and money moved between your own accounts aren't counted as spending.
- Conservative by default. A new subscription is only counted as monthly once it has charged a month apart. Interest is only claimed when there's evidence you pay it.
How products are ranked
Offers are ranked by how much they save or earn you, never by what Lirandel is paid. Cards are compared by what each would add to the cards you already have over two years, using your own spending, after annual fees and expected foreign fees, including a welcome bonus only if your usual spending would reach it. Savings accounts are compared by their rate after any conditions. Lirandel's automated tests fail if what Lirandel earns ever changes the order.
How Lirandel earns money
Some providers may pay Lirandel a referral fee when you open an account or are approved for a card through Lirandel. The amount is shown next to the offer and next to the Apply button, before you click. Suggestions that don't involve a product (cancelling a subscription, asking for a fee refund) earn Lirandel nothing, and say so. Today Lirandel has no partner agreements, so it earns nothing from any offer. Lirandel doesn't sell your data.
Where terms come from
Card terms and savings rates are read from each provider's own website, with the date shown. Card terms are re-checked at least every 30 days and savings rates every 14 days; older ones show a warning. See today's rates, and the full method in how Lirandel picks cards.
Lirandel prepares, you decide
Nothing happens until you approve it. When you approve a suggestion, Lirandel prepares the next steps: the message to send your bank, the checklist of what an application will ask for, the amount to move. You do the submitting on the provider's own site. Lirandel never fills in applications for you, never asks for your Social Security number, and never runs a credit check.
What Lirandel won't do
Full budgeting or net-worth tracking, lending or cash advances, and investment advice. Lirandel gives general information, not financial, legal or tax advice. See the disclosures.