Frequently Asked Questions
(and answers!)
The weekly dividend will fluctuate depending on how many people are in the Comingle community and the amount of our combined earnings. It will max out at $15,000 per year. So at this point we can only say that you'll receive an amount somewhere in this range:
Weekly: $1.96 – $288
Monthly: $7.84 – $1,250
Annually: $101.92 - $15,000
At launch, Comingle will be accessible to anyone in the U.S. with a bank account that's been active for at least 3 months and is registered for online banking. Once we're up and running in the U.S., we hope to make Comingle accessible to other countries, and provide options for those without bank accounts.
To ensure the integrity of the system, each Comingle member provides access to their online banking using a third-party service called
Plaid, a secure and well-established system for linking banks to electronic financial services. (If you use apps like Venmo, Acorns, or Coinbase, then you've used Plaid before.)
While our aim is to make the sign-up process as simple and noninvasive as possible, it may often be necessary for members to authorize a "soft" credit inquiry or connect additional accounts before they can receive their dividend.
Once a bank connection is established, Comingle is alerted when a deposit is made in your account. 7% of the deposited amount becomes part of your contribution.
Some examples:
- If I deposit a royalty check for $100, then $7 gets added to my Comingle contribution.
- If I get a direct deposit for my wages of $1,000, then $70 gets Comingled.
- If I get a capital gains deposit for $10,000 then $700 gets Comingled.
In most cases, you'll have the option to request that a contribution be refunded to you if you feel like it was for a deposit that doesn't qualify as income.
There is a $2 weekly minimum contribution for participation. In other words, if your bank account shows no income for the week, you'll still be required to make a $2 contribution. The nice part is that if you can't afford it, the $2 is simply deducted from your dividend, and you'll come out ahead for the week.
Otherwise, the cost for participation is 7% of your income, but some or all of that gets returned to you in the form of guaranteed weekly deposits.
Once per week, your total contribution and dividend will be calculated, and you’ll see one transaction in your bank account. If the dividend that week is larger than your contribution, you’ll see a deposit for the difference into your account. If your contribution that week is bigger than the dividend, you’ll see a withdrawal of the difference from your account.
You can cancel anytime, but you'll need to wait 2 years before renewing again. A lot can happen in two years, so you might want to reconsider cutting yourself off from a source of guaranteed income.
Anybody can face hardship, whether it’s from a sudden injury, a loss of employment, a lull in business, inconsistent gig work, or a million other reasons. But there's no reason that hardship needs to drop someone into poverty and insecurity.
For yourself, you can think of it as a convenient tool to give you a little boost when business is slow or the chips are down in your own life.
If you're already set for life, your participation in Comingle's guaranteed income community will indeed involve a net financial contribution every week. But if you're interested in giving back to folks who could use some help, Comingle is an efficient and forward-thinking option that can be set up in minutes.
And when you join the community, you’ll know that 98 cents of every dollar you contribute will be going directly to somebody who needs it, proportionally to how much they need it, without bureaucratic waste or middlemen’s salaries. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more effective giving option.
Yes! If you would like to support the effort to provide a guaranteed income for people, but you'd prefer to just add a lump sum to the community's fund, please
get in touch.
At this time, we're encouraging outside supporters to formally pledge a preferred amount, which is then released to the community fund incrementally based on the number of members.
Comingle is specifically designed to support individuals and their families, so only personal bank accounts can be connected to the Comingle fund. The best way for large groups to participate would be to encourage everyone in the group to sign up individually,
If you're interested in helping to increase the Comingle dividend through corporate or institutional sponsorship, please
get in touch.
Not unless the particular group you wish to specify is "human beings" or "all members of Comingle," in which case you're in luck, because Comingle already specifically targets those very groups!
If we're building a system that can help everybody, that means everybody. It's time to accept that we're all in this together, whether we like it or not.
No. Anonymity is a key ingredient in Comingle. While it might be nice to put names and faces to all the great people who have joined up to help each other, displaying any information about individual members could potentially put personal financial information at risk.
Comingle retains 2% of the fund to cover the cost of operations and pay its employees. Bear in mind, though, that every Comingle employee is also a member, so 7% of their earnings chip into the Comingle Fund as well.
Comingle uses a broad array of fraud detection and prevention techniques to protect our community from abuse. In addition to conventional first- and third-party fraud, we also check for a more recent threat called synthetic fraud. We are also on the lookout for money-laundering schemes on the part of nefarious organizations. So, if we have to ask for a bit of additional information to make sure we know who you are, you’ll know that it’s because we want to protect all of us who are honestly doing our best to help each other out.
Rest assured that your data is encrypted and protected both in-transit and at rest on our servers by the latest bank-grade security standards and protocols. We never see, or store your banking passwords. That information remains confidential between you and your bank. In addition, our networks and servers are constantly monitored for advanced persistent threat’s (APT’s) and other threats to your data.
That would definitely shake things up. First things first, though. Let's get some food on the table we've got before we try building a new one.
There's nothing preventing you from doing that except for maybe your "good conscience." The hope, however, is that you'd feel better about yourself if you allowed some of your new income to flow back to the community that helped you through the tough times.
You'll also need to wait 24 months before you can renew your membership, so there's that to consider.
A "job" is actually a conditional income, which means that it is in no way guaranteed. Jobs come and go. Your dividend will always be there.
Um... probably? Depends on which one you ask. We kind of got tired of waiting for them.
Comingle is a modern, tech-driven take on the concept of Universal Basic Income and builds upon a wealth of great ideas that have been proposed over the years. It's a bit different though, in that it's only for those who sign up for it and it won't necessarily cover the cost of all the "basics" for everyone. On the flip-side, it can happen a lot sooner, it side-steps all the messy government politics, and the question of "how do we pay for it?" is answered directly by the mechanics of the system.
If you'd like to learn more about Universal Basic Income (UBI) just
click here.
Pretty much. But in those models, people generally pitch in money, then wait their turn to make use of the collected funds. They're also limited to a small group of people who are socially connected in some way.
Nope. It's people just like you trying something new, looking out for each other and dreaming of a better world. That's as American as it gets.
Hmm. Maybe? Perhaps there are more fulfilling reasons people might want to work.
Might be time to start building some robots or get a better business model. People shouldn’t have to go through that.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
