What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files that websites store on your device when you visit them. They help websites remember your preferences and understand how you interact with content. Think of them as digital bookmarks that help us provide you with a personalized experience.

Some cookies disappear when you close your browser (session cookies), while others stick around for months or even years (persistent cookies). We use both types, and each serves a specific purpose in making your budgeting journey smoother.

Types of Tracking We Use

Specific Cookies We Deploy

Here's a breakdown of the actual cookies you'll find on firoxelia.com and what they do:

• session_id – Keeps track of your login session so you don't get logged out every time you click a link. Expires when you close your browser.
• user_preferences – Stores your display settings and interface choices. Lasts for 12 months.
• _ga and _gid – Google Analytics cookies that help us understand traffic patterns and popular content. These last 2 years and 24 hours respectively.
• consent_status – Remembers your cookie preferences so we don't ask you again every visit. Lasts 12 months.
• feature_tour – Tracks whether you've seen our feature introductions so we don't show them repeatedly. Expires after 6 months.

How Tracking Improves Your Experience

Let me be specific about what this means in practice. When you use our budgeting calculator, functional cookies remember the expense categories you created last time. When you come back a week later, they're still there.

Analytics cookies help us see that 70% of entrepreneurs struggle with the same step in our cash flow planner. That tells us where to add better guidance or video tutorials. Without that data, we'd be guessing about what needs improvement.

Marketing cookies mean you might see our article about quarterly tax planning when you're reading business news elsewhere online – and that's probably more useful than a random advert for something you'd never need.

Data Retention

Different cookies have different lifespans based on their purpose. Session cookies vanish the moment you close your browser. Preference cookies typically last 12 months because that gives us a reasonable balance between remembering your choices and keeping data fresh.

Analytics data gets aggregated and anonymized after 26 months. We keep it that long because seasonal business patterns matter for entrepreneurs – comparing January 2025 to January 2024 helps us understand cyclical challenges.

You can clear all cookies manually at any time through your browser settings. Just know that doing so means you'll need to set your preferences again when you return.

Third-Party Services

We work with a few external services that place their own cookies. Google Analytics is the main one. We've configured it to anonymize IP addresses and respect Do Not Track signals where possible.

If you use our live chat support feature, that service places a cookie to maintain your conversation history during your session. Our email newsletter platform also uses a tracking pixel to tell us which content resonates with entrepreneurs.

These third parties have their own privacy policies, and we recommend reviewing them if you want complete visibility into how your data moves around.

Changes to This Policy

Technology changes, and so do tracking methods. We'll update this policy when we add new cookie types or change how we use existing ones. The "last updated" date at the top tells you when we made the most recent changes.

Major changes will be communicated through email to existing users. Minor clarifications or additions might just appear here without specific notification, so it's worth checking back occasionally.