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?
- Verified income detected from bank deposits counts at full rate — gig, cash-deposited, and informal income included. Self-reported income counts at half rate and is always labelled self-reported, never displayed as verified.
- 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?
- Weekly, with an automatic recompute on Sunday night, plus one on-demand refresh per day.
- 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 behaviour — 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. Communication is scored as reliability — 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 instalments. 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.
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.