There's a temptation in building a finance tool to tell people what they should do. Spend less on eating out. Cancel that subscription. Move more into savings. The data is right there — why not use it to nudge people toward "better" behaviour?
We thought about this a lot, and we decided against it. Keep shows you what's happening with your money. It doesn't tell you what to do about it.
Your context is yours
The reason is simple: we don't know your life. We can see that you spent more on eating out this month, but we don't know that you've been working 60-hour weeks and cooking feels impossible right now. We can see that you haven't added to your savings, but we don't know that you're supporting a family member through a difficult time.
Financial decisions are life decisions. They're wrapped up in relationships, health, priorities, seasons, values, and a thousand things that a piece of software can't see. Telling someone to "spend less on takeaways" without knowing why they're ordering takeaways is presumptuous at best and harmful at worst.
Observation, not judgement
Instead, Keep observes and reflects. "Your eating out has increased over the past three months." "August was your most expensive month this year." "Your savings balance is the same as it was in June."
These are facts, stated calmly. They give you information without attaching a verdict. And that turns out to be more useful than advice, because it lets you bring your own context to the picture and draw your own conclusions.
Maybe seeing the eating-out increase makes you think "I should cook more." Maybe it makes you think "that was worth it — I needed the break." Both responses are valid. Both come from understanding.
Trade-offs, not instructions
Where Keep does get more specific is in showing trade-offs. Should you overpay the mortgage or build up savings? Switch to monthly insurance or keep paying annually? Start saving for Christmas in July or deal with it in December?
For each of these, Keep can show you the numbers honestly. The mortgage overpayment saves £23,000 in interest but reduces your monthly buffer. The monthly insurance costs £144 more per year but eliminates the September crunch. There are real pros and cons either way.
Keep's job is to make those trade-offs clear. Your job is to decide which one fits your life.
Respecting autonomy
Behind this is a deeper belief about how tools should work. We think the best tools make you more capable, not more dependent. They give you understanding that you carry with you, not instructions that only work inside the app.
If Keep is doing its job well, you should feel more confident about your finances — not because Keep told you everything was fine, but because you genuinely understand what's happening and feel equipped to make good decisions.
That confidence belongs to you. Keep just helped you find it.
A mirror, not a map
Keep is a mirror. It reflects your financial life back to you clearly, calmly, and without judgement. What you do with that reflection is entirely up to you.
We think that's more respectful, more useful, and more honest than pretending we know what's best for your household.