Privacy policy

Who is responsible for your data

Grocery Mentor (grocerymentor.com) is an independent site operated by SK Jabedul Haque, and is the data controller for the information described on this page. The fastest way to reach us about anything privacy-related is the contact form.

The calculators themselves

Every calculator on Grocery Mentor runs entirely in your browser. The numbers you type in — your budget, your grocery prices, your household size — are never sent to our servers or stored anywhere. They disappear the moment you close or reload the page. No account, no sign-up, no server round-trip.

What we do collect, and why (purposes & legal basis)

Two optional forms send data to us directly, only when you choose to use them:

• Contact form — name (optional), email, your message, and a coarsened version of your IP address (see "IP addresses" below). Purpose: to read and reply to you. Legal basis: your consent, given by submitting the form (and our legitimate interest in operating a working support channel).
• Community savings tip submissions — your tip text, category, an optional display name, and an optional savings estimate. Purpose: to review and, if approved, publish it on the site as public content. Legal basis: your consent — submitting a tip is an explicit request to have it considered for publication.

Both forms are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile (a privacy-friendly bot check) and IP-based rate limiting to prevent abuse.

Cookies

Cloudflare, our hosting and security provider, sets a small number of essential cookies on our behalf — for example __cf_bm and cf_clearance — used only for bot mitigation and keeping the site secure and available.

We also use Google Analytics 4 (see "Analytics" below), which sets its own cookies — such as _ga and a per-property _ga_<container-id> cookie — to distinguish visitors and measure return visits. Google Analytics itself remains configured without audience-building/advertising-features linkage. Separately, we now run Google AdSense to show ads on this site — see "Advertising" below for what that means for cookies and your choices.

On your first visit, a compact cookie banner lets you Accept or Decline Google Analytics — your choice is remembered in your browser for future visits. Declining doesn't affect your ability to use any calculator or guide on this site.

Advertising (Google AdSense)

This site runs ads through Google AdSense. Google and its advertising partners may use cookies and similar technologies to serve ads, limit repeat impressions, and measure ad performance — including personalized ads based on your browsing activity, unless you choose otherwise.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the UK, or Switzerland, a consent banner lets you choose whether to allow personalized ads before any ad-related cookie is set, and you can change that choice anytime via the banner's "Manage options" link. Outside those regions, you can control ad personalization directly through Google's Ad Settings, and opt out of interest-based advertising more broadly at optout.aboutads.info. Google's own policies (policies.google.com/technologies/ads) describe what Google does with data collected through these cookies; we don't control that processing beyond choosing to run the ads.

IP addresses

When you submit the contact form, we store a coarsened version of your IP address (the last part zeroed out, e.g. 203.0.113.0 instead of your exact address) — enough to spot abuse patterns, not enough to pinpoint you individually. Your exact IP is used momentarily for the Turnstile bot check and rate limiting, then discarded; it is not stored anywhere in coarsened or exact form beyond that. Separately, our Google Analytics 4 configuration has IP-anonymization turned on.

How long we keep it (retention)

Contact form submissions are kept for up to 90 days, then deleted automatically, unless we need to keep a specific message longer to resolve an ongoing issue you raised. Approved community tips are public content and are kept indefinitely, the same way a testimonial or comment would be, until you ask us to remove one you submitted (see "Your rights" below). Rejected/pending tips that are never approved are deleted during routine cleanup. Google Analytics data retention is controlled in our Google Analytics settings, separate from our own database.

Who processes it (sub-processors)

Grocery Mentor is hosted entirely on Cloudflare (Cloudflare Pages for hosting, Cloudflare D1 for the small database that stores contact messages and tips, and Cloudflare Turnstile for bot protection). We also use Google Analytics 4 and Google AdSense, both provided by Google LLC — Analytics as a separate analytics processor, AdSense as our advertising partner (see "Advertising" above). We don't use a separate CRM or email marketing tool. Cloudflare and Google may each process data on infrastructure located outside your country — see "International transfers" below.

International transfers

Because we run on Cloudflare's global network and use Google Analytics 4, your request may be processed on servers outside the country you're browsing from. Cloudflare and Google both maintain standard contractual safeguards for cross-border data transfers (such as Standard Contractual Clauses); see Cloudflare's and Google's own privacy documentation for details on their respective transfer mechanisms.

Your rights (access, deletion, and more)

You can ask us to: tell you what we have on file for a message or tip you submitted, correct it, or delete it. Reach us through the contact form — mention that your request is about privacy/data and reference the email or name you used when submitting, so we can find the right record. We'll respond and act on legitimate requests within a reasonable time. For data Google Analytics holds about you, you can also use Google's own controls at myaccount.google.com/data-and-privacy, or opt out of Google Analytics tracking site-wide via the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

We never sell your data

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information for money, and we never have. Our advertising partner, Google AdSense, may use cookies for ad personalization and measurement as described in "Advertising" above — this counts as "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising under some state laws, even though no money changes hands for your specific data. You can opt out of that sharing at any time using the ad-personalization controls above, or by asking us through the contact form. There is no separate data broker or affiliate tracker on this site. If you are a resident of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, Virginia, or another US state with a consumer privacy law, you also have the right to know what we hold, to get a copy of it, to correct it, to delete it, to opt out of this kind of sharing, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights. Because we hold so little else, a single request through the contact form covers all of them, and you may use an authorised agent to submit it on your behalf.

Changing or withdrawing your cookie choice

Your Accept or Decline choice is stored in a first-party cookie called gm_cookie_consent. To change it, clear this site's cookies and site data in your browser settings — the banner will appear again on your next visit, and analytics stays off until you accept. Declining, or later withdrawing consent, never limits any calculator or guide.

Children's privacy

Grocery Mentor is a general-audience budgeting tool, not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or the relevant minimum age in your jurisdiction). If you believe a child has submitted information to us, contact us via the contact form and we will delete it.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to understand which tools and pages are useful, how people find the site, and how to improve it. Google Analytics only loads after you accept analytics cookies and is provided by Google LLC as a separate data processor — Google's own privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy describes how Google handles the data it receives. In our configuration, IP-anonymization is enabled and audience-building and advertising features are disabled. We do not use analytics to track you across unrelated websites for advertising purposes.

Changes to this policy

If this changes, we will update this page and the "Last updated" date below. Last updated: 15 September 2026.