Money

Personal finance guidance with practical rules for saving, investing, and avoiding common traps.

Security Scan

The skill's requested footprint and runtime instructions match its stated purpose (personal finance guidance); there are no unexpected installs, credentials, or file accesses, though it will ask for sensitive personal financial details which you should handle carefully.

Purpose & Capability

Name and description describe personal finance guidance and the SKILL.md contains practical finance rules and a checklist for asking user context (debts, income stability, country). No unrelated binaries, env vars, or config paths are requested.

Instruction Scope

Instructions stay within the domain of giving advice and explicitly tell the agent to ask about debts, income stability, and country of residence. The skill does not instruct reading local files, environment variables, or sending data to external endpoints. Note: it will request sensitive personal financial information from the user as part of normal operation.

Install Mechanism

Instruction-only skill with no install spec and no code files — nothing is written to disk or downloaded during install.

Credentials

No environment variables, credentials, or config paths are required. The only 'secrets' involved are user-supplied personal financial details entered during a conversation, which is proportionate to the purpose but should be treated as sensitive.

Persistence & Privilege

Defaults are used (always:false, model invocation enabled). The skill does not request permanent presence or system-wide modifications. If you allow autonomous invocation, the agent might proactively ask for personal context; consider disabling autonomous invocation if you prefer manual control.

Assessment

This skill appears coherent and appropriate for financial guidance. Before using it: (1) Be mindful that it will ask for sensitive personal financial details (debts, income, country). Do not share account logins, passwords, full SSNs/IDs, or bank credentials — those are unnecessary for general advice. (2) If you need country-specific tax or regulatory guidance, consider anonymizing amounts (use ranges) or confirm you want to share exact figures. (3) If you prefer to review each interaction, disable autonomous invocation on your agent so the skill cannot proactively solicit private data.

Personal Finance Rules

Before Any Advice

• Ask about existing debts, income stability, and country of residence — generic advice without context is dangerous
• High-interest debt (credit cards, payday loans) must be paid first — no investment beats 20%+ guaranteed return of eliminating debt
• Emergency fund of 3-6 months expenses comes before investing — without it, any crisis forces selling at the worst time

Inflation Reality

• Cash in savings accounts loses purchasing power every year — 2-3% inflation means €10,000 becomes €7,400 in real terms after 10 years
• Long-term projections must use real returns (after inflation) — 7% real is honest, 10% nominal is misleading
• "Safe" bonds can lose to inflation — being conservative isn't the same as being safe

Investment Math

• Fees compound against you — 1% annual fee takes 25% of returns over 30 years
• Time in market beats timing the market — missing the 10 best days in a decade cuts returns in half
• Past performance predicts nothing — last year's top fund is often next year's loser
• Diversification is the only free lunch — single stocks are gambling, broad index funds are investing

Tax Awareness

• Every country has tax-advantaged accounts — ask which ones apply before recommending where to invest
• Capital gains, dividends, and interest are taxed differently — account type matters
• Tax loss harvesting and rebalancing have tax implications — don't ignore them
• Retirement accounts have withdrawal rules — early access often means penalties

Behavioral Traps

• Lifestyle inflation silently erases raises — a €5,000 raise that becomes €5,000 more spending changes nothing
• Loss aversion makes people sell winners and hold losers — the opposite of what works
• "I'll start investing when I have more money" is the most expensive delay — small amounts now beat large amounts later
• Checking investments daily increases bad decisions — less attention often means better returns

Insurance First

• Protect existing assets before growing them — health, disability, liability coverage
• Life insurance only matters if someone depends on your income
• High deductibles with lower premiums often make sense for those with emergency funds
• Insurance is for catastrophic risks, not minor inconveniences

Debt Hierarchy

• Not all debt is equal — mortgage at 3% is different from credit card at 22%
• Paying minimums on low-interest debt while investing the difference often wins mathematically
• Student loans and mortgages may have tax benefits — factor them in
• Debt-free feels good but isn't always optimal — opportunity cost matters

Practical Automation

• Pay yourself first: automate savings on payday — what's left is what you spend
• Automate bill payments to avoid late fees and credit damage
• Increase savings rate with every raise — split the raise between lifestyle and saving
• Annual rebalancing is enough — more frequent trading usually hurts

Red Flags

• Any "guaranteed" high returns — if it sounds too good, it is
• Pressure to decide quickly — legitimate opportunities don't vanish in 24 hours
• Complex products you don't understand — complexity hides fees
• Anyone who benefits from your investment decision giving you advice