Playbook User Reviews

Name: Playbook - Intelligent Finance
Rating: 4.36913 (149 reviews)

Playbook - Intelligent Finance

Herring Labs, Inc.

💰 Finance

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Great for planning for the future

I’ve been using playbook for some time now given that retirement planning is becoming more and more important to me. I like that the app helps you to create a plan for saving and taking advantage of tax savings depending on how you choose to invest your money. I also like that it’s not just a tool that spits out information, it also helps you take action on your plan by moving money for you, whether it’s from checking to HYSA or from checking account to an investment account. You can do it all in one place, even if you have multiple types of accounts. The team is constantly seeking feedback to improve which I appreciate. When you experience and report a bug, they’re on it right away! If you’re a high earner but didn’t learn about investing and saving for retirement in school (like me 😅), consider using Playbook. The best time to start planning for retirement was yesterday, the second best time to start is now.

Ambragirl

2 years ago

Freezes

The app spins and spins and doesn’t tell you any analysis. Freeze too much. Renders useless

Addiel1

2 years ago

Do not download

This app collects precious personal information and in return tells you to invest in your 401k and Roth IRA. Does not give helpful information. They make money off of an unreasonable subscription and collects your data.

chucktan

2 years ago

Scam

They keep trying to charge you even if you cancel your account. Avoid using this app

Idefasio

2 years ago

Incomplete product

My employer does a direct contribution based on my salary, this app doesn’t account for those types of contributions.

As far as I can go without paying for the service is just the app telling me it can save me money but there isn’t even a hint as to how it plans to do that.

Idea: connect brokerage accounts and allow the app to determine tax loss harvesting data, real estate holdings and have functions for cost segregation etc.

This app has potential but there’s no clear picture of when it’ll be there for advanced tax strategies for the layman.

hawaii ryguy

2 years ago

Response from developer

Thanks for sharing some feedback! We sent you an email that included an onboarding call link to show you around the product and all that we offer on our platform. During onboarding, you will connect investment accounts, calculate your net worth, and receive personalized recommendations to improve, and execute, your financial plan. We also offer a number of other financial planning tools (including Tax Loss Harvesting) so we'd love to chat with you to show you around!

Garbage app

Also, you have to email them to delete your account.

nullbie

2 years ago

Response from developer

Thanks for sharing some feedback! While we do allow users to delete their accounts in the app, however, we were happy to assist with your deletion request! With that said, we love learning from our customers and would be thrilled to connect with you at some point soon to understand how we could've provided a better experience for you. We'll be in touch!

Collects too much information

I like the idea of an app that can help you build your financial strategy, but I don’t understand why it needs to collect so much personal information. Once I saw it asking me for my SSN, I canceled my subscription and decided to delete the app. To build a hypothetical strategy, all you need is my HH income and age. You don’t need my SSN. I don’t feel safe providing my SSN to a random app online for no apparent reason.

Sophie123452024

3 years ago

Response from developer

Hi Sophie - David, Founder & CEO, here. Thanks for the comments. Playbook is a Registered Investment Advisor with the SEC. This is great for you because you get Fiduciary protection: we have a legal duty to make recommendations that are in your best interest, not ours. The one downside however, is that we have a compliance obligation to the SEC to verify you are who you say you are. That is why we need to collect your SSN. If you'd like to give us another shot, please email us at hello@helloplaybook.com. I'll make sure that someone from our credentialed support team provides a 1:1 white-glove onboarding experience so you can see exactly how the product works.

Basic and too expensive

First and most important: advising on 401k and backdoor Roth IRA is not going to save me any money since I’m already doing and maxing out on that. Secondly, your investing strategy is going to underperform my current one. Third, paying 59 dollar per month is crazy. The app is very basic and not worth your time or money. Just max out your 401k and google Backdoor Roth IRA and put your investments in S&P500 ETF and you are good to go, no app needed for and definitely don’t pay any money for it. Reason for 2nd star: The Playbook app was honest to tell me that without Playbook I will save 300k more until retirement age then without Playbook…

Ctheb86

3 years ago

I want to like it but…

The monthly fee is too steep for what it is. If it were $5 I’d think it’s reasonable.

Another issue I have is that it calculates your expenses in a very confusing way if you receive one-time income events throughout the year (bonuses, stock vests). It asks for a monthly savings figure, but then subtracts this against your annual (incl. the one-time events) income.
Unfortunately there’s no way to actually input the annual expense manually, so you have to do the mental math to figure out what your amortized monthly savings is (which is annoying).

Overall, seems like it has a ways to go before $15-19 becomes reasonable to charge.

wjwalcher

3 years ago

The best investing app.

Playbook has been a great service for me. I’ve used it for over a year now, and it has helped me automate my savings, investments, and retirements with ease. I highly recommend it for anyone who’s looking to automate their saving in a tax advantaged manner.

Schib-SF

3 years ago

DO NOT DOWNLOAD AND USE THIS UNSAFE APP

This app asks all your personal information including SSN. Read terms and conditions- they aren’t responsible for data leakage.

Zdravstvuyte

3 years ago

Response from developer

Thanks for leaving your feedback! Like other financial service entities, we are required by SEC regulations to gather information including, but not limited to, your SSN as well as other user information. With that said, we take information security very seriously - we utilize bank-level security with 256-bit encryption on our platform, and use Plaid to view your account information securely. If there are any other questions we can answer for you, please don't hesitate to email us!

STAY AWAY - Info grab with minimal use

No functionality, just an email grab… fun fact, you can’t tell me when my “financial independence” date is when you don’t even ask how much I have saved today.

This is a lame duck app that got me with a simple social media app, don’t waste your time.

Pintrest' best

3 years ago

Response from developer

We're sorry to hear that you didn't have a great experience with us! It sounds like you may not have linked your external accounts which, we agree, is crucial in determining your Financial Freedom age. If you want to give us another try, we'd be happy to coordinate a personalized 1-1 to make sure you're getting the most out of our platform. Either way, thanks for giving us a try!

Collects massive amounts of data; paywalls an astronomical price to even see what you’re getting

I hardly ever take time to write a review, but this app has earned it. It collects a treasure trove of information on you. And then at the end, if you want ANY sort of advice of ANY kind, you have to fork over a huge amount of money, not having ANY idea what you’re getting. In my case, it’s $29 per month. For what? I know what IRAs and pre-tax strategies are. Anyone with google and a functioning brain can figure that out. Not impressed. And you can’t delete your account without emailing them a request.

jnobleband1

3 years ago

Response from developer

Hello. David, Founder & CEO, here. I'm genuinely really sorry you had a bad experience with Playbook. We ask people a couple of questions about their finances at the start so we can see what they're currently doing with their money. Based on this, we can make an estimate of the potential uplift of optimizing their financial plan. Some people are doing everything optimally already, and we usually recommend that they don't need to subscribe. If there's room to improve, we want to show how much that is worth to them before they subscribe. If you'd like to give us another shot, please email us at hello@helloplaybook.com. I'll make sure that someone from our credentialed support team gives a 1:1 white-glove onboarding experience so you can see exactly how the product works.

Seems like a good concept

Does not allow me to add Vanguard Roth IRA

Prwardi

3 years ago

Response from developer

Thank you for the feedback! Sorry for any difficulty in setting up your account. Can you please send us an email at hello@helloplaybook.com so we can follow up on this? Vanguard can be difficult to connect with, but we can hopefully clear up the issue.

Want to use but adding Roth IRA not working

Good app concept, I created an account but on the step to add a Roth IRA, it lets me connect to my brokerage (Vanguard) via plaid shows my Roth IRA account, but doesn’t let me use it & progress in the app.

Also it’s a little expensive per month

Chosensoles

3 years ago

Response from developer

Thank you for the feedback! Can you please shoot us an email at hello@helloplaybook.com so we can follow up on the Roth IRA issue? Vanguard is sometimes difficult to connect with, but hopefully we can help clear up the issue.

Was excited for this but unfortunately full of bugs

Couldn’t even get past filling in all my details as it didn’t accept the date format that it specifically asked for…

Ayswooshy

3 years ago

Response from developer

Sorry about that. Our bad. We updated a library which inadvertently introduced a bug. The last release fixed the bug. Would love it if you could give us a try again. Phil from support is going to reach out via email too. Thanks for letting us know!