Questions, answered plainly.
Where a decision hasn’t been made yet, this page says so rather than guessing. Anything missing is something we’re still working out.
Company & mission
- What is Teenth?
- Teenth is a consumer app that builds your reliability record — you connect your bank, set goals, work with Sherman (an AI coach who reads your record and remembers what you tell him), and build a trusted Circle of supporters. Teenth is in pre-launch: you can create your account, build your Circle, set goals and start hitting milestones now. The Teenth Score itself and bill payment arrive in the next release. It is built by The Teenth Project.
- Why is it called Teenth?
- The name claims the lineage of the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments — each of which addressed political liberty, none of which addressed economic liberty. Teenth is the amendment America never wrote.
- Is Teenth a nonprofit or a charity?
- No. Teenth is a mission-driven business that generates revenue through memberships, partnerships, and premium services. Sustainability is part of the mission, not in tension with it.
The Teenth Score
- What is the Teenth Score?
- A reliability score. It is private and coaching-oriented, built from five weighted inputs: on-time payment behavior (30%), savings discipline (25%), spending behavior (20%), income transparency (15%), and community engagement (10%).
- Is it the same as my credit score?
- No. The Teenth Score operates outside the framework of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It is not reported to credit bureaus, does not affect your FICO score, and is not used by lenders in credit decisions. It is a private tool you own and control.
- What happens if my Score would be low?
- There is no D and no F, and there never will be. The scale runs A down to C−; below that you are in the Building state — the Sixteen Grid filling in, no letter at all. It makes no sense to stamp ‘bad credit’ on someone who simply has not started yet. A person early in their record has not failed anything; they have not been read yet. Teenth is built to tell those two things apart, and it never punishes a person for being at the beginning.
- Does Teenth judge what I buy?
- Never. Spending is scored on volatility and spend-to-income ratio only. Category-level judgment of purchases is permanently off the table.
- What if my income isn't a regular paycheck?
- It still counts. Income is read from the deposits that actually land in your bank — gig work, cash you deposit, several jobs at once, irregular weeks. There is no self-reported income on Teenth: you are never asked to type a number, and nothing you could type would count. What we can see, we count; what we cannot see, we do not guess at.
- Can the Score be gamed?
- Anti-gaming controls are built into the methodology from day one: caps on attestations per person per year, waiting periods for new Circle members, limits on how many Heads-Up late flags earn full benefit, and reciprocal-attestation deduplication.
- How often does it update?
- Once a week, automatically. There is no refresh button and no way to recompute on demand — a Score you can re-roll is a Score you can shop for, and reliability is a pattern over time rather than a number you catch on a good day. Your record always shows when it was last calculated.
- What is Verified Reliability?
- The credential version of your Score — a PDF built from documented evidence. It is generated only at your request and delivered only by you. Teenth does not transmit it to any third party automatically.
How it works
- Does Teenth move my money?
- No. Teenth reads bank data through Plaid to detect bills, income, and savings behavior — it does not execute payments, hold funds, or move money on your behalf. Bill payment and Circle-to-biller contributions arrive in the next release.
- What is the Heads-Up?
- Flag a payment late before its due date and the first two each year carry no penalty. A late payment does not mean a person is unreliable — it means life happened, which it does to most people at some point. What tells you someone is reliable is that they said so in advance. Communication is scored as reliability here, and no other credit system measures it.
- What is the grace window?
- Five days, built as reward rather than punishment: paying early or on time earns a prompt-pay bonus, and anything inside the window is penalty-free.
- What is Pay at Your Pace?
- A planned feature letting you split a bill to match your income rhythm — a monthly bill broken into weekly or per-paycheck installments. Today you can set an intended pace and Teenth tracks plan against actual; it does not execute the payment yet.
- What is the Circle?
- The people who vouch for you — family, chosen family, mentors, employers, faith leaders. Their attestations are documented and count toward your Score, because recovering from a hard month has always depended on the people behind you.
- Is the Score the only way to show I'm reliable?
- No, and that matters more than it sounds. There are eight ways your record shows reliability — the people who vouch for you, showing up daily, milestones earned, courses finished, using what's offered, flagging a payment early, keeping your Circle told, and paying your bills. Seven of those work today with no bank connected at all. Paying bills is the eighth, and it is the one still in preview.
- What is the Daily Signature?
- One short financial-literacy question a day. It builds a streak, and showing up consistently is itself a reliability signal — it does not require a bank, a balance, or a good month.
- What can I earn?
- The first is $25, when five people have verified they stand for you and you have thirty days of signing behind you. It goes against a real bill, never to a balance — the point was never to hand anyone money, it was to prove the record does something. Rewards are funded by members and partners.
- What is the Teenth Token?
- Sixteen milestones, sixteen pieces — a record of specific things you did, each one dated and evidenced. It is earned and only earned: it has never been for sale, no amount of money produces one, and nothing you buy from us includes one.
The card, offers, and posting
- What is the Teenth Card?
- An identity card, not a payment card. It holds no money and carries no card number — someone scans it and lands on your record, where they can vouch for you or ask to join your Circle. The digital card works today; the physical one arrives later.
- What is my member number?
- The order you joined, and it is yours from the day you create an account — before any physical card exists. It is permanent: it never changes, and it is never given to anyone else, even if an account is closed.
- What are offers, and how do you make money from them?
- Offers are products and programs we checked before passing along — money back in your pocket, an opportunity, or help when you need it. Where Teenth earns a referral, the card says so on its face and that revenue funds the reward pool. Commission is never a ranking input: on any screen of three or more, at least one free option ranks above the first paid one.
- Are offers the same as rewards?
- No, and they are deliberately kept apart. A reward is what Teenth gives you, funded by members. An offer is a third party's product that we vetted. They live on different screens and are never mixed.
- Can I attach a document or a screenshot to a post?
- Yes — an image or a PDF, up to 10 MB, on any update you write to your Circle. Attachments are private to your record: they are not on a public link, and nobody can reach one by guessing a URL.
- What are the mini courses?
- Short, plain lessons about your actual money — the hard month, where it goes, cutting bills without cutting your life. Finishing one counts on your record.
Your data
- Do you sell my data?
- No. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to lenders. Product analytics exclude transaction contents entirely.
- Do you have my bank password?
- No. Bank connections run through Plaid; your credentials go to them, never to us. We cannot move money in or out of your accounts.
- Who can see my record?
- Nobody, unless you show them. Your record is private by default, and your public profile shows only the fields you switch on — enforced on our servers, so a field you turned off is never sent to a visitor's browser at all.
- Can I delete my account?
- Yes. Close it whenever you like and request deletion of your data; we remove personal information within 30 days, except where the law requires us to keep something.
The full terms live in the Platform Terms, Privacy Policy, and Score Disclosure.