Press Kit · Launching July 2026
The only personal finance app that tells you whether you're actually doing well.
Mint and Monarch tell you what you spent. Keeping Up tells you whether $6,400 a month in spending is high or low for a 34-year-old in NYC Finance. Built on anonymous aggregated peer data from 2,000+ city × industry × age cohorts.
At a glance
Mint MAU at the January 2024 shutdown (widely reported industry figure) — the displaced audience the personal-finance category has not yet re-served.
Peer cohorts (city × industry × age). Mint, Monarch, YNAB, Copilot, Personal Capital all have zero.
Tier 1 rate locked for the first 100 users for as long as they stay subscribed; Tier 2 locked after that. Standard pricing $99/yr individual, $149/yr household.
AI Advisor built on Anthropic Claude. Token costs have collapsed enough that personalised AI advice is now economically viable for a $99/yr SaaS.
Lean operating model by design. Sustainable subscription economics from day one, not the ad-supported model that ultimately failed Mint.
US financial institutions connected via Plaid. One integration spans every major bank, brokerage, retirement-plan provider.
Why launch now (and not in 2014)?
Four tailwinds converging in 2026:
The Mint Vacuum
3.6M displaced users since January 2024 shutdown. Monarch and Copilot are picking up the budgeting subset; peer benchmarking remains unclaimed.
AI Cost Collapse
What cost dollars per user per query in 2022 now costs cents per month. Personalised AI financial advice at a $99/yr SaaS price point became economically viable in the last 24 months.
Plaid Production Maturity
Open-banking infrastructure that didn't exist when Mint launched. We can ship in 6 months what would have taken Mint 3 years.
Consumer SaaS WTP Confirmed
Monarch and YNAB have both demonstrated meaningful subscriber bases at $99-100/yr for budgeting alone. The market pays for personal-finance software it actually uses.
Competitive positioning
The defining feature — peer benchmarking — is what Mint had 15 years and 3.6M MAU to build and never shipped. We launched with it.
| Product | Peer Benchmarks | AI Advisor | Household | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keeping Up | ✓ City + Industry + Age | ✓ | ✓ | $99–$149/yr* |
| Monarch Money | — | — | — | $100/yr |
| YNAB | — | — | — | $99/yr |
| Copilot | — | — | — | $95/yr |
| Empower (formerly Personal Capital) | — | — | — | Free |
| Mint (discontinued 2024) | — Never shipped | — | — | Free |
*Founding Member pricing ($49/yr Tier 1, $69/yr Tier 2 — locked for as long as the member stays continuously subscribed) is available to the first 500 paying users only. Standard pricing $99/yr individual / $149/yr household applies thereafter. Competitor pricing reflects public list rates as of May 2026; categories marked “—” mean the product does not advertise a comparable feature at the time of writing.
Press contact
Peter Waitzman — Co-founder & Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer
AFC® · CPFC® · Financial Wellness Educator
Peter is a former financial advisor turned financial-wellness educator. He is the founder of Expedition Money, a financial-wellness education and coaching program, the author of eight books on personal finance, and a frequent speaker and podcast host on financial wellness. He holds a degree in economics from Northwestern University. At Keeping Up, Peter leads marketing, revenue, and partnerships.
Peter handles all press inquiries — interviews, product demos, assets, embargoed announcements, and category background.
The product ships with the security posture of a team-scale fintech: TLS 1.3 in transit, application-level encryption for Plaid access tokens at rest, a GLBA-aligned information security program, a published vulnerability disclosure policy at keepingup.com/security, automated dependency audits, and read-only Plaid scopes with no money-movement permissions.
Pitch angles by beat
For reporters covering different beats — pick the framing that fits your story.
“The first personal finance app that tells you whether you're actually doing well, not just what you spent.”
“The AI cost collapse of the last 24 months has made personalised financial benchmarking commercially viable at consumer SaaS prices — a use case that wasn't economically feasible in 2022.”
“Subscription-first consumer fintech launching against a category historically dominated by ad-supported free products. Founding Member cohort underwrites day-one revenue; standard pricing $99/yr individual, $149/yr household after the FM cap closes. Lean operating model designed for sustainable unit economics at consumer SaaS prices.”
“Peer benchmarking from voluntarily-shared anonymised financial data. 2,000+ cohorts. Names, emails, account numbers never appear in any comparison. Methodology published at keepingup.com/methodology.”
“How much should I be spending on rent in NYC if I'm a 34-year-old finance professional? Keeping Up tells you. It's the question Mint never answered.”
Story arc for long-form pieces
For publications doing a deeper feature, here's the natural narrative spine:
- The Mint problem. Mint died not because they ran out of users but because they never built a moat. Free with ads, no benchmarking, easily replaceable.
- The peer-context insight. A founder watching Mint die realises the missing feature isn't another budget tracker — it's the answer to "am I actually doing well?"
- The AI-cost moment. Personalised, on-demand financial advice that was economically out of reach for a $99/yr SaaS in 2022 became viable in the last 24 months as model costs collapsed.
- The Plaid maturity moment. Open-banking maturity means one integration spans 12,000+ institutions. Mint launched pre-Plaid; the equivalent build today takes a fraction of the time.
- The founder bet. Build the thing Mint never shipped — peer benchmarking as a subscription-first consumer fintech in a category historically run on ads. Founder-funded through launch; the Founding Member cohort underwrites day-one revenue while organic growth ramps.
- The category prediction. Personal finance apps that don't answer "am I doing well?" will become Mint-class commodities. The ones that do will become essential.
Assets available on request
- Hi-res product screenshots (PNG 1920×1080, 8 frames)
- Founder headshot (JPG 2400×3000)
- Brand guidelines (logo, palette, typography — PDF)
- 60-second product demo video (MP4 1080p)
- Founder quotes pre-drafted for attribution
- Embargoed launch announcement — date coordinated on request
- Full press kit doc (PDF; covers fact-check shortcuts, founder bio, story arc)
Email press@keepingup.com with the assets you need; Peter responds within 48 hours.
Fact-check shortcuts
For verifying claims in this kit:
- Mint MAU figures — 3.6M is the widely-cited industry figure at time of shutdown; we're happy to share the secondary sources we've seen if you need them for fact-check.
- Monarch / YNAB subscriber and revenue figures — both companies have disclosed numbers in founder interviews and podcast appearances; email press@keepingup.com for the specific citations we're working from.
- Plaid coverage (12,000+ institutions) — plaid.com/products/
- Anthropic API pricing — anthropic.com/pricing
- Keeping Up pricing — keepingup.com (public + final)
- Benchmark methodology — keepingup.com/methodology
Working on a deadline?
Email press@keepingup.com with "DEADLINE: [date/time]" in the subject. Peter responds within 48 hours, faster on deadline.
For non-press inquiries: support@keepingup.com