Terms of Service

1. What Beacon is

Beacon is an educational product operated by Lighthouse Companies, LLC (“Beacon,” “we,” “us”). It teaches general principles of personal finance through lessons, interactive scenarios and calculators. By creating an account or otherwise using Beacon, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use Beacon.

Beacon is not financial, investment, tax, accounting or legal advice. It does not know your full circumstances, does not create an advisory, fiduciary or professional relationship of any kind, and is not a substitute for a qualified professional. Figures, rates, tax limits and examples are illustrative, may not reflect current law, and change over time. Any decision you make based on Beacon is your own, and you assume full responsibility for it.

Lighthouse Companies, LLC is not a bank, lender, broker-dealer, investment adviser, tax preparer, accountant or law firm, and Beacon does not hold, move, invest or manage anyone’s money. Calculators, simulators and scenarios return estimates from the figures and assumptions you enter or choose; they are not predictions, offers or quotes, and real results will differ.

2. Eligibility and your account

How you agree. You accept these Terms and the Privacy Policy by ticking the box when you create an account, or when we ask you to review them. We keep a record of when you did and which version you accepted. If you use Beacon, you are bound by these Terms from the first use even if you never tick a box.

Beacon is offered to people in the United States. You must be at least 13 years old, and at least 16 in jurisdictions where that is the minimum age for consent to data processing, to create an account. If you are under 18, or under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian must agree to these Terms for you and is responsible for your use of Beacon, and only they may buy a paid plan for you. By using Beacon you represent that you meet these requirements. One account per person.

You sign in with a link sent to your email address, or with Google, so you are responsible for keeping access to that email account (and to your Google account, if you use it) secure, for only using sign-in links you asked for, and for all activity under your account, whether or not authorized. Tell us promptly if you believe it has been accessed without your permission — you can sign out every device from Settings. We are not liable for any loss arising from someone else using your credentials, unless it results from our own failure to secure the service as described in our Privacy Policy.

3. Plans and payment

Beacon offers a free plan and paid subscription plans. Paid plans are billed in advance through Stripe on the interval you select. Prices are shown before you pay and may change with notice; a change never affects a period you have already paid for.

The free plan is not a trial. It has no time limit, needs no card, and does not expire or convert into a paid plan on its own. What it includes is described on the pricing page and the curriculum pages, and it is what the free plan includes today rather than a permanent guarantee: as Section 11 says, we may change, add or remove features, and we will not describe the free plan as “free forever” in order to imply otherwise.

Paid plans renew automatically at the end of each billing period, at the price shown for your plan and interval, until you cancel. If a free trial is offered, its length is shown at checkout before you confirm, it is available once per account, and the first payment is taken when the trial ends unless you cancel before then.

Price changes. If we change the price of your plan, we will tell you by email at least 30 days before the new price applies to your next renewal, and you may cancel before then. If you do not cancel, the new price applies from that renewal. A change never affects a period you have already paid for.

You may cancel at any time from Settings → Billing. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period: you keep full access until then. You do not need to contact us to cancel, and we will not make you. Payments are non-refundable, and we do not give refunds or credits for unused time, except where the law requires it or where we choose to in a particular case. We do refund a charge taken after you canceled, or taken by mistake. Canceling stops future renewals and never cancels access you have already paid for.

If a payment fails, access continues during a short grace period while Stripe retries. If payment is not resolved, the account moves to the free plan. Your progress is not deleted.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• share, resell or redistribute Beacon’s content;
• scrape, bulk-download or systematically extract content;
• attempt to bypass access controls, entitlements or rate limits;
• reverse-engineer, decompile or attempt to extract the source code of the service, except where a jurisdiction’s law makes this restriction unenforceable;
• interfere with the service, its infrastructure, or other users’ use of it;
• use Beacon to provide financial advice to others as though it were your own;
• use Beacon for any unlawful purpose, or in a way that infringes anyone else’s rights.

We may suspend or terminate an account that does these things, with or without notice depending on severity. Where the situation allows it, we will tell you why.

5. Content and intellectual property

Lessons, scenarios, simulators, questions, and the Beacon name, logo and design belong to Lighthouse Companies, LLC or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws. Your account gives you a personal, non-transferable, non-exclusive, revocable license to use them for your own learning while your account is active — nothing here transfers ownership of any of it to you.

Your progress data — answers, XP, achievements, saved simulator runs, net worth entries — belongs to you. You can export it at any time from Settings → Your data.

Feedback. If you send us an idea, suggestion or correction, we may use it without owing you anything or giving you credit.

Copyright. Beacon does not host content posted by its members. If you believe something on Beacon infringes your copyright, email support@lighthousecompanies.pro with what it is, where it is, and your contact details.

6. Disclaimers

Beacon is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. We do not warrant that Beacon will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or that any figure, calculation, or piece of content is accurate, complete or current. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you in full.

Explanations written by AI, which you can ask for on some plans, are generated at the moment you ask and are not reviewed by a person before you see them. They can be wrong. Treat them like the rest of Beacon: education, not advice.

7. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Lighthouse Companies, LLC and its officers, employees and contractors are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data, or goodwill, or for any financial decision you make in reliance on Beacon, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our total aggregate liability for any claim arising out of or relating to Beacon is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) fifty US dollars ($50). Some jurisdictions do not allow these limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you.

8. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Lighthouse Companies, LLC and its officers, employees and contractors from any claim, liability, damage, loss or expense (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or relating to: your use of Beacon; your violation of these Terms; your violation of any law or the rights of a third party; or any financial, tax or legal decision you make or action you take based on Beacon.

9. Dispute resolution: binding arbitration and class action waiver

Please read this section carefully — it affects your legal rights, including your right to file a lawsuit in court and to have a jury trial.

You and Lighthouse Companies, LLC agree that any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of Beacon will be resolved by binding individual arbitration, administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, rather than in court, except that either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies. Arbitration will take place in Arizona, or another location we agree on, or be conducted by phone, video or on the papers where the arbitrator allows it.

Try us first. Before either of us starts an arbitration, the one with the complaint must send the other a written notice describing it and what they want, to support@lighthousecompanies.pro (for you) or to the email address on your account (for us), and we will both try in good faith to settle it for 30 days. An arbitration filed without this step can be paused until it is done.

Class action waiver. All claims must be brought in an individual capacity, not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, consolidated or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person’s claims and may not otherwise preside over any form of a representative or class proceeding. If this class action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim (and only that claim) must be brought in court, and the rest of this section still applies to everything else.

Many claims at once. If 25 or more people bring similar claims against us through the same lawyer or group, the claims will be arbitrated in batches of no more than 25 at a time, one batch after another, and the fees for later batches are not due until the earlier ones are done.

Opting out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing support@lighthousecompanies.pro within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, stating your name and that you opt out of arbitration. If you opt out, disputes will be resolved under Section 10 instead.

This section does not prevent either party from seeking injunctive or other equitable relief in court to prevent misuse of intellectual property or unauthorized access pending arbitration.

10. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Arizona, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. To the extent any dispute is not subject to arbitration under Section 9 (including because you opted out), you and Lighthouse Companies, LLC consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal courts located in Arizona.

11. Availability and changes to the service

We aim to keep Beacon available and accurate, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted service. We may change, add or remove features. Where a change materially reduces what a paid plan includes, we will give notice and you may cancel.

12. Ending your account

You may delete your account at any time from Settings → Your data. Deletion is immediate and permanent: progress, XP, achievements, answer history, saved runs, net worth entries and bookmarks are erased. Any active subscription is canceled at the same moment, without a refund for the rest of the period. The few records we keep afterwards, such as the invoices tax and accounting law requires, are listed under Retention in our Privacy Policy. We may also suspend or terminate your access for violating these Terms, as described in Section 4.

13. General

Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Lighthouse Companies, LLC about Beacon, and supersede any earlier agreement on the same subject.

Severability. If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest remains in full effect, and the unenforceable part will be read to give effect to its intent as closely as the law allows.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce any part of these Terms is not a waiver of our right to do so later.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms. We may assign them, including in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, on notice to you.

Electronic communications. You agree that we may give you notices, and that any legal notice or record we owe you may be given, by email to the address on your account or in Beacon, and that those satisfy any requirement that they be in writing. Keep your email address current. This does not stop us sending a notice by mail as well.

Third-party services. Beacon links to government and other websites, and uses services such as Stripe and Google. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content or terms; your use of them is under their terms.

Translations. We may offer these Terms in Spanish for convenience. If the translation and the English text differ, the English text controls.

Force majeure. We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including outages at a hosting, payment or email provider we rely on.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. Material changes will be notified by email or in the app before they take effect, with the date they apply from. For a significant change we may ask you to accept the new Terms the next time you open Beacon. Continuing to use Beacon after a change takes effect means you accept it; if you do not, you may stop using Beacon and delete your account.

15. Contact

Questions about these terms: Lighthouse Companies, LLC, at support@lighthousecompanies.pro. See the Privacy Policy for how we handle your data.