100 | Is It Safe to Connect Your Bank to a Budgeting App? Open Banking Explained for Neurodivergent Brains

Is it safe to connect your bank to a budgeting app? Open banking explained for ADHD, autistic and dyslexic adults: what an app can see, whether it can take your money, and how to switch it off.

You get as far as the screen that says connect your bank.

Your thumb hovers, and you close the app.

Then you tell yourself you are being paranoid, and feel worse.

The facts you need to decide for yourself, either way, and how to protect yourself if you say yes.

In this episode, Esther Bangura, financial coach for neurodivergent adults, answers the question she is asked more than almost any other about budgeting apps.

She explains how open banking works in plain language, what read only access means, what a data breach could and could not do, and where to switch access off in your own banking app.

Then she gets to the question underneath the safety one: what happens when you see all of your money in one place for the first time.

Built on her regulation before budgeting approach and her research with 279 neurodivergent adults in the UK.

Esther is an official PocketSmith coach and discloses her affiliate commission in the episode.

• Why a budgeting app connected through open banking never receives your banking login, and can see your money but not move it.
• What a hack could and could not do, and the one rule that protects you from the phone calls where real loss happens.
• The question underneath the safety question, and what to do the first time you see all your money in one place.

Ninety minute one to one coaching session.

We look at what is already connected to your bank, and you make the decision with me beside you. If it is yes, you see it all in one place for the first time, with someone there to help you make sense of it. You leave with the decision made rather than still circling it.

Book at estherbangura.com/coaching

PocketSmith, the budgeting app I mentioned in this episode

Get 50% off the PocketSmith Foundation Monthly plan for the first two months: https://my.pocketsmith.com/redeem?tap_a=77627-d2024d&ref=mzjlndb&code=50OFFPREMIUM-F4RG

This is an affiliate link. If you sign up through it I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I use myself and with my clients.

I am an official PocketSmith coach, listed in their coaching directory as a neurodivergent money coach.

If signing up is easy but setting it up is the part that never happens, that is exactly the kind of thing we do together in a session.

The ND Money Insider, my weekly newsletter estherbangura.com/newsletter

The Neurodivergence and Money Report estherbangura.com/nd-money-report

Check a firm on the FCA register register.fca.org.uk

Questions, feedback or reviews estherbangura.com/ask

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