LifeStash In development
Your important life. Safe and sorted.
Policies, accounts, documents and contracts all come with a number to quote and a date that matters. Both tend to live in a drawer, an inbox and somebody's memory at the same time, which is fine until the morning you need the policy number and the renewal was last week.
LifeStash keeps both in one place and tells you before a date arrives, in time to switch, renew or renegotiate rather than roll over onto whatever the provider charges next.
What it holds
Nine kinds of thing, each with the fields that kind actually needs rather than a blank notes box:
- Insurance — insurer, policy number, cover level, excess, whether it auto-renews and last year's premium, against the renewal date.
- ISAs — provider, type, balance and what you have paid in this tax year, kept apart from anything transferred in.
- Pensions — workplace, personal, SIPP or final salary, with the employer and the next statement date.
- Bank accounts — bank, account type, sort code and account number, masked until you tap.
- Rentals — landlord or agent, deposit, which scheme holds it, notice period, and the dates the tenancy ends and the break clause falls.
- ID documents — passports and driving licences, with who holds them and when they expire.
- Vehicles — registration, breakdown cover, garage, and MOT, tax and service due dates.
- Contracts — broadband, mobile, energy and TV, with the tariff and the date the contract ends.
- Finance agreements — interest-free credit, buy now pay later, car finance and loans, with the cash price, deposit, monthly payment, how many are left and any balloon payment at the end.
What it does
- Tells you in good time. Each date can alert you 60, 30, 14, 7, 3 or 1 day before, and always on the day itself.
- Renewing is one dialog. It asks for next year's date and next year's price together, because that is the moment you know both.
- Shows what it all costs. The monthly outgoing across the whole stash, and the cash actually leaving over the coming year — which is smaller when an agreement finishes part-way through. Tap it for the breakdown by type, because the useful question is never the total, it is which one is the big one.
- Keeps an eye on the ISA allowance. Adds up what you have paid in across every ISA this tax year and shows what is left of the £20,000, with money transferred between providers correctly left out of it.
- Holds the paperwork too. Photograph the policy schedule or attach a PDF. Files are encrypted in the app's own storage and never land in your gallery.
- Links what belongs together — the car and its insurance, the agreement that bought the sofa and the warranty on it. Link them once and it shows on both.
- Finds things. Search across names, providers, references and notes, and each result says why it matched.
- Light and dark themes, or follow your phone.
The emergency pack
The one nobody wants to think about. Tick the items that someone would need if anything happened to you, and LifeStash writes them out as a single password-protected PDF: every provider, reference number and renewal date, in an order a stranger can follow.
It opens in any PDF reader, so whoever needs it does not need this app, an account, or your phone. It is also, by design, enough to impersonate you — so it tells you as much on the first page, and you decide where it is kept and who knows the password.
What it costs
LifeStash will be free to install, and everything that records and reminds is free with it: all nine types, as many items and dates as you like, the reminders, attachments, links, search, running costs and the ISA allowance card.
The encrypted export is free too, and always will be. Your records are yours, and charging to let you take a copy out would be holding them hostage. A single payment unlocks the extras built on top of it: the emergency pack, automatic backups to a folder you choose, and exporting one item on its own, for a broker or an adviser.
One payment, not a subscription, and no adverts anywhere. The price will be set before release.
Your data
This is a list of your account numbers and where your money is. It is treated that way.
- Encrypted on the phone. The database is held in SQLCipher under a random 32-byte key, generated on your device and wrapped by the Android Keystore. It never leaves the phone.
- Behind your screen lock. Fingerprint, face or PIN on opening, and locked again after 30 seconds in the background.
- No account, no cloud, no analytics. There is no server to sign in to and nothing is uploaded. Android's automatic backup is switched off, so no copy goes to Google either.
- Not on the screen unless you ask. Screenshots and screen recording are blocked, and account and policy numbers stay masked until you tap to reveal them.
- Discreet notifications. A reminder names the item only when the phone is unlocked. On the lock screen it says that something needs your attention, and nothing more.
The trade is the obvious one: nothing is held anywhere but your phone, so losing the phone loses the stash. Export an encrypted backup from Settings and keep it somewhere of your own. Read our privacy policy.
Where it is up to
In development, and not yet on Google Play. It runs on Android 8.0 and up. If you would like to know when it is ready, email [email protected] and I will tell you.
Questions
Email [email protected].