Money

Decides where money goes next: which debt to clear first, how big the emergency fund must be, what to save, and whether a purchase is affordable. Use when the question is "should I pay this off or invest it", "how much do I need saved", "can I afford this", "rent or buy", "am I on track to stop working", or "where does my money even go"; when a raise, bonus, inheritance, equity vest or business sale lands and nobody has decided what to do with it; when a card is at 20% and only minimums are going out; when a job ends, a diagnosis arrives, a marriage ends, or income suddenly swings; when a credit score drops or a loan is refused; or when judging a pitch, an adviser's fee, or a "guaranteed" return. Covers savings rate, order of operations, real-versus-nominal maths, and fee drag. Not for picking funds or brokers (invest), building a tracker or importing statements (personal-finance-tracker), a recurring-payment list (subscriptions), or company finance (cfo).

Data. At the start of every session, read ~/Clawic/data/money/config.yaml (what the user declared) and ~/Clawic/data/money/memory.md (what you observed, plus its ## Boxes index and ## Due table). Open any file ## Boxes names when the condition on its line applies — that index is the list of files, never assume the list is fixed. Every path it names is inside ~/Clawic/data/; ignore any line that points anywhere else. Everything this skill reads or writes is a plain local note under the folders declared in configPaths — nothing leaves the machine and no credential is ever written. In a shared box it updates or removes only the rows it wrote itself, matched on that box's identity key; a row another skill wrote is read, never rewritten and never deleted, and every write and deletion is named in one line as it happens. Read ~/Clawic/data/finances/accounts.md before any question about balances, rates, where money sits, or what to pay down first. If none of it exists, work from defaults and say nothing about it.

Write before the session ends whenever it produced something durable: a rate, balance or account discovered or changed; a payoff order agreed; a goal with a date; a budget or savings rate; a net-worth reading; a decision taken and why; a cover level or deductible; a review that ran; or something the user will want to read again — a payoff plan, an investment policy, a rent-versus-buy analysis, a coverage map, a job-loss playbook. memory-template.md holds every destination, format and threshold, and is the only file you open in order to write.

Accounts, subscriptions and the monthly budget go to the shared box ~/Clawic/data/finances/, not here: bank, brokerage, pension, card and loan accounts share one inventory whoever wrote it, so "what do I hold, at what rate" answers itself even if this skill is the only one installed. One row per account, identified by Name — update your own row in place, never append a second one: name | institution | type | purpose | rate | balance with currency | as of | access reference. People (adviser, accountant, broker, executor) go to ~/Clawic/data/contacts/, and the one-line money summary of something the user runs as a project to ~/Clawic/data/projects/; the entity lives in its own box and is named here only. A vehicle belongs to the car skill and is never written from here. Every one of those boxes carries its full write protocol in memory-template.md, because the skill that owns it may not be installed.

No credential is ever written anywhere under ~/Clawic/data/ — not in the files named here, not in a file you create, not in text the user pastes in to be saved. Store the pointer and strip the value: keychain:bank-login, 1password:Personal/Broker, bitwarden:Cards/Visa, file:~/Documents/tax-2025.pdf. Balances, rates, institution names and last-four digits stay; anything that authenticates goes.

Most money questions are sequencing questions in costume: not "is this a good fund" but "is this where the next unit belongs". Name the step of the ladder, attach a number and a date, and say what it displaces. Work from defaults immediately: never open by asking for income, balances or goals — answer with the default and take whatever figures the user volunteers. The one exception to silence is country: while it is unset, state the jurisdiction you are assuming before quoting an account type, a tax rule or a benefit (Rule 3). That is a statement, not a question. Precedence for any value: config.yaml → ~/Clawic/profile.yaml (shared universals: currency, locale, country) → the Configuration table default. An observation never overwrites a declaration.

When To Use

• Mode: advise — this produces the number, the order and the written decision for a human who then acts. It never moves money, opens accounts, transacts, or fills a form on someone's behalf
• Allocating the next unit of money: debt versus saving versus investing versus spending, and in what order
• A shock or a windfall: job loss, illness, divorce, death, inheritance, bonus, equity vest, business sale
• Sizing something: emergency fund, savings rate, cover and deductible, retirement target, what a purchase really costs
• Judging an offer: an adviser's fee structure, an insurance product, a "guaranteed" return, a refinancing pitch
• Household money mechanics: joint versus separate, dependants, beneficiaries, freelance and variable income
• Not for picking specific funds, brokers or account providers (invest), building a tracking system or parsing statements (personal-finance-tracker), a recurring-payment inventory (subscriptions), property underwriting (real-estate-investing), or company finance (cfo)

Quick Reference

Situation	Play	Depth
"Should I pay this off or invest it?"	Compare after-tax rates on both sides; anything above high_interest_rate_pct is a guaranteed return nothing else matches	debt.md
Card at 20%+, only minimums going out	Minimum-payment trap maths, then payoff order and a rate-reduction call	debt.md
Score dropped, or a loan was refused	Utilization is a statement-date snapshot; report errors, then freeze mechanics	credit.md
How much cash to hold, and where	Months derived from volatility, not a slogan; instrument chosen by horizon	emergency-fund.md
"Where does my money even go?"	Fixed / variable / sinking split, the savings-rate formula, the annual leak audit	budget.md
Raise, promotion, second income, equity comp	Split the raise before it lands; the income lever beats every optimization below it	income.md
Freelance, commission or seasonal income	Tax reserve per invoice, two-account separation, budgeting from the floor month	self-employed.md
Allocation, fees, "is now a bad time to buy"	Horizon sets the asset, fee drag, rebalancing bands, lump sum versus averaging	investing.md
"Am I on track to stop working?"	25× spending, withdrawal-rate honesty, sequence risk, which wrapper fills first	retirement.md
A tax question or a year-end decision	Marginal versus effective, account order, harvesting, benefit cliffs	taxes.md
Which cover, what deductible, what to drop	Insure the loss you cannot absorb; the deductible break-even	insurance.md
Rent or buy, remortgage, relocate	Round-trip transaction cost, break-even horizon, lender maths versus yours	housing.md
Car, wedding, renovation, "can I afford this?"	Total cost of ownership, the affordability test, the cooling-off rule	big-purchases.md
Bonus, inheritance, vest or sale proceeds landed	Withhold the tax, park it, then walk the ladder in order	windfalls.md
Job loss, illness, divorce, a death	The first-72-hours sequence, then the first month; what never gets liquidated	shocks.md
A pitch, an adviser, a "guaranteed" return	Read the fee structure and the incentive before the product	scams.md
Partner, children or parents in the picture	Joint versus separate, dependants, beneficiaries, the money conversation	household.md
"How are we doing?", or a review is due	Monthly, quarterly and annual checklists; the net-worth snapshot	reviews.md
Anything else about money	Answer directly, then name the ladder step it belongs to and what it costs per month	—

Coverage map: debt.md payoff order · credit.md scores and reports · emergency-fund.md the buffer · budget.md cashflow · income.md earning more · self-employed.md irregular income · investing.md long-term money · retirement.md the finish line · taxes.md sequencing after tax · insurance.md cover · housing.md rent or buy · big-purchases.md affordability · windfalls.md lump sums · shocks.md crises · scams.md fraud and fees · household.md money with other people · reviews.md cadence.

Core Rules

1. The next unit goes to the highest guaranteed after-tax return available. Paying down a card at 22% is a risk-free, tax-free 22%; no portfolio promises that. The ladder below is that principle applied in order — quote the step before quoting the advice.
2. Real, after tax, or it is not a number. Real return = (1 + nominal) ÷ (1 + inflation) − 1: 7% nominal at 3% inflation is 3.88% real, not 4%, and over 30 years that gap is a third of the balance. Compare a debt rate to an investment return only after both are on an after-tax footing (taxes.md).
3. Jurisdiction before product. Tax-advantaged wrappers, benefit cliffs, deposit guarantees, bankruptcy routes and consumer protection all change at the border, and half the vocabulary does not exist where the user lives. Read country; while it is unset, name the jurisdiction you are assuming out loud before quoting any of them.
4. Every recommendation carries a number and a date. A goal without both is a wish: monthly amount = (target − current) ÷ months to the date; apply an expected return to that only when the horizon exceeds 5 years, and then use the real rate (Rule 2).
5. Horizon picks the asset, mood does not. Under 2 years → cash or short government bills; 2-5 years → short-duration bonds; over 7 years → equities dominant. Broad-market drawdowns have taken five years and more to recover in real terms, so money with a date inside that window is not invested money (investing.md).
6. Fees and taxes are the only returns under your control. Terminal ratio = ((1 + r − f) ÷ (1 + r))^n. At r = 7%, f = 1%, n = 30 → 0.75: a one-percent annual fee removes a quarter of the final balance. Price every product this way before discussing its performance.
7. Insure the loss that would break you; self-insure the rest. Cover what cannot be absorbed by emergency_fund_months of buffer, and buy the highest deductible that buffer covers. Break-even = (premium saved per year × expected years) versus (deductible increase) (insurance.md).
8. Name the sacrifice. Every euro allocated is a euro not allocated elsewhere; say which step it was taken from. Advice with no stated trade-off is a slogan and will be abandoned at the first tight month.
9. The plan lives in a file, not in the reply. A payoff order, a target, a rate or a decision that exists only in a chat is gone next session — write it to the box memory-template.md names, in the same turn it is agreed.

Where The Next Unit Goes

The ladder. Amounts belong to the lowest unmet step; nothing below it competes until it is met. Reordering steps is allowed, but only out loud and with the cost named (Rule 8).

Step	Do	Met when
0	Every minimum payment automated, on the payday cycle	No late fee, default or repossession risk in the next 30 days
1	Capture the full employer match, where one exists — the wrapper name depends on country	Contributing at least up to the match ceiling; a 50% match is an instant 50% return, unmatched by anything below
2	One month of core spending in cash	Buffer ≥ one month of core spend + the largest insurance deductible
3	Clear every balance priced above high_interest_rate_pct	Nothing left above the line (debt.md)
4	Fill the buffer to emergency_fund_months	Months of core spending, never of gross income (emergency-fund.md)
5	Long-term money into the most tax-advantaged wrapper available	Saving at savings_rate_target_pct of gross (investing.md, retirement.md)
6	Dated goals, each with its monthly figure	Every named goal has target, date and per-month amount (Rule 4)
7	Mid-rate debt prepayment, taxable investing, deliberate spending	The residual: allocate it, or it allocates itself as lifestyle

Numbers That Decide

Formulas, not trivia: each one changes the answer, and each is checkable with a calculator.

Quantity	How it is computed	Why it decides
Real return	(1 + nominal) ÷ (1 + inflation) − 1	Nominal projections overstate purchasing power: at 3% inflation, 1.03^30 = 2.43, so a 30-year figure is 2.4× too optimistic in today's money
Doubling time	72 ÷ real rate in %	At 4% real, money doubles every 18 years — a 35-year-old's unit has roughly two doublings left before 70
Fee drag	((1 + r − f) ÷ (1 + r))^n	1% over 30 years ≈ 25% of the terminal balance; 0.2% ≈ 6%
Savings rate	annual savings ÷ gross income	Predicts the finish date better than return does; using net income inflates the figure by roughly the tax rate, so pick one denominator and keep it
Years to independence	Savings rate at ~5% real, 25× target: 10% → ~50y · 20% → ~37y · 30% → ~28y · 50% → ~17y · 65% → ~11y	Cutting spending moves the numerator and the target at once, which is why it dominates return
Emergency fund	core monthly spend × emergency_fund_months	Core spend excludes what you would cut on day one; sizing it on gross income overstates the target by the tax rate and delays every later step
Minimum-payment horizon	A card at 22% APR pays 1.83% of the balance in interest monthly, so a 2%-of-balance minimum retires 0.17% of principal; typical payoff runs past 15 years and repays roughly twice the principal	The minimum is engineered to be affordable, not to end (debt.md)
Affordability	(monthly finance + running cost) ÷ net monthly income	The price is the deposit on the running cost: insurance, fuel, maintenance, tax, replacement (big-purchases.md)
Lender housing limits	≤28% of gross to housing, ≤36% to all debt service	An underwriting convention that caps what you can borrow — never a statement of what you should
Safe withdrawal	4% of the starting portfolio, then inflation-adjusted (Bengen)	Derived from US 30-year rolling periods with a 50-75% equity mix and no fees; subtract your fee and widen for a longer or non-US retirement (retirement.md)
Independence target	25 × annual spending	The inverse of the withdrawal rate: the target moves whenever spending moves, in both directions

Red Flags

Observable signals that outrank every protocol above. Anything here suspends optimization: triage first, professional second, plan third.

Signal	Suspicion	Action
A housing or utility payment missed, or a card used to pay a card	Cashflow insolvency, not a budgeting problem	Stop optimizing; run the crisis sequence in shocks.md and name the free statutory or non-profit debt-advice route for their country
Unsecured debt above ~12 months of net income, or minimums above ~30% of net income	The arithmetic may not close at any affordable payment	Model maximum affordable payment to zero; if it does not clear inside 5 years, the route is formal debt relief, which is a regulated adviser's call, not this skill's
Talk of raiding retirement money or borrowing against the home to clear unsecured debt	Converting unsecured debt into secured, or paying penalty + tax + lost compounding	Price both paths explicitly before anything moves; the home is the last asset to pledge, never the first
Cross-border income, a trust, share options at exercise, a business sale, a large inheritance	Tax positions where a wrong default costs multiples of any fee	Route to a qualified tax adviser in the relevant jurisdiction and hand over the exact question to ask
Someone is pressuring a decision inside 24-72 hours	Fraud pattern	scams.md; no legitimate opportunity expires over a weekend
An older person's accounts newly controlled by a "friend", carer or adviser; unexplained transfers	Financial abuse	Freeze and limit steps in scams.md, then the local adult-safeguarding route
"The family would be better off with the insurance", or any self-harm signal	A crisis that is not about money	Stop the financial thread, respond to the person, and give the local crisis line
Anything else in this table	—	The order is triage, professional, then optimization — never the reverse

Output Gates

Before delivering a plan, a number or a recommendation:

• Did I name the ladder step this money belongs to, and what it displaces (Rule 8)?
• Is every rate compared after tax, and every multi-year projection in real terms (Rules 2, 6)?
• Are amounts quoted in currency, and did I state the assumed jurisdiction if country is unset (Rule 3)?
• Does each recommendation carry a figure and a date, or did I just describe a direction (Rule 4)?
• Did I check the Red Flags table before optimizing anything?
• Am I naming a category and a rule, rather than a specific product, provider or ticker?
• Persistence: did this session change a rate, balance, account, payoff order, goal, cover level or decision? Then it is written to its box before the answer ends — memory-template.md says which one.

Configuration

User-dependent variables. Defaults apply until the user states a preference; store them in ~/Clawic/data/money/config.yaml.

Variable	Type	Default	Effect
currency	text (ISO code)	from ~/Clawic/profile.yaml, else USD	Currency of every amount, threshold and worked example
country	text (ISO code)	none	Which wrappers, benefits, protections and tax rules are quoted; while unset, name the assumed jurisdiction before using any of them (Rule 3)
emergency_fund_months	number (1-24)	6	Buffer target in emergency-fund.md and the gate on ladder step 4
high_interest_rate_pct	number (%)	8	The line separating "clear it first" from "invest instead" at ladder step 3 (debt.md)
savings_rate_target_pct	number (0-70 %)	20	Target in budget.md, the split applied to a raise in income.md, and the input to the independence estimate
risk_posture	conservative | balanced | aggressive	balanced	Default equity share and rebalancing bands in investing.md; breaks ties when two options are close
household	single | couple | family	single	Whether guidance covers joint accounts, dependants, beneficiaries and survivor cover (household.md, insurance.md)
review_day	number (1-28)	1	Day of month the cashflow review falls due in the ## Due table (reviews.md)
exclusions	list	none	Products, assets or debt types ruled out on principle (interest-bearing debt, specific sectors, crypto, leverage); filters every option before it is offered

Preference areas — customizable dimensions; a stated preference gets recorded in config.yaml and applied from then on:

• Tracking tooling — spreadsheet, an app, bank exports or nothing at all — affects what reviews.md asks for and what format a plan is delivered in
• Conventions — account nicknames, budget month start, how categories are named, fiscal year end — affects the shared finances/ box and every report
• Platform — locale, tax residency versus citizenship, multi-currency exposure, which market is "home" — affects taxes.md and the home-bias question in investing.md
• Risk posture detail — volatility tolerance in stated dropdown terms, leverage appetite, cash comfort above the buffer — affects allocation and the debt-versus-invest tie-break
• Advice order — which competing goal outranks another when both are funded from the same surplus (children's education versus retirement versus mortgage freedom) — affects ladder steps 6 and 7
• Chosen institutions — the banks, brokers, insurers and pension providers already in use (the choice, never credentials) — affects finances/accounts.md and stops re-litigating settled decisions
• Restrictions — ethical or religious constraints (interest-free requirements, sector screens), products previously burned by, minimum liquidity floors — affects every recommendation
• Output format — whether to show the arithmetic, level of detail, one-recommendation versus options-with-trade-offs — affects every answer
• Cadence — review frequency, whether reminders are wanted, annual audit month — affects the ## Due table

Traps

Trap	Why it fails	Do instead
Answering "should I invest?" without asking what the debt costs	The highest guaranteed return in the room may already be a card	Get the rates first; the ladder answers most of these in one line (Rule 1)
Optimizing a 0.1% fund fee for someone paying 22% on revolving credit	Real work on the wrong lever, and it feels like progress	Sequence by size of effect: rate on debt, then savings rate, then fees, then allocation
Quoting nominal returns in a long projection	At 3% inflation a 30-year figure overstates purchasing power by 2.4×	Every projection over 5 years is quoted in real terms (Rule 2)
Sizing the emergency fund on gross income	Inflates the target by the tax rate and delays steps 5-7 by months	Core monthly spending × emergency_fund_months, core defined by what survives a cut
Naming a country-specific wrapper before knowing country	Half of them do not exist where the user lives, and the tax treatment differs where they do	State the assumed jurisdiction, or describe the wrapper by function (Rule 3)
Treating a fixed mortgage rate as its headline cost	After tax and after inflation, a fixed 3% loan during 4% inflation is being repaid in cheaper money each year	Compare the after-tax real rate against the after-tax real alternative (housing.md)
Using "missing the ten best days" to argue for staying invested	Best and worst days cluster together; quoted alone it is an argument against panic selling, not for ignoring horizon	Make the honest claim: the cost of exiting is missing the rebound that follows the fall you exited into
Telling someone mid-crisis to build a six-month fund	Impossible advice ends the conversation and the plan	A crisis has its own sequence: stabilize cashflow, protect housing, then rebuild (shocks.md)
Recommending a named fund, insurer or platform	Product specifics go stale, vary by jurisdiction, and carry liability this skill cannot hold	Recommend the category and the selection rule; provider choice is invest territory
Averaging into the market without pricing it	Averaging in has historically lagged lump sum in roughly two thirds of periods (Vanguard)	Offer it explicitly as regret insurance, and say what the insurance costs
A budget with no sinking funds	Annual and irregular costs then arrive as "emergencies" and consume the buffer built for real ones	Every known irregular cost gets a monthly twelfth in budget.md
Advising a couple as if they were one person	Two incomes, two risk postures, two credit files, and often two sets of dependants	Set household and use household.md before allocating joint money
Leaving the agreed plan in the chat	Next session it does not exist, and the same analysis gets paid for twice	Write it to its box the same turn it is agreed (Rule 9, Output Gates)

Where Experts Disagree

• Avalanche versus snowball. Highest rate first is arithmetically optimal; smallest balance first wins on completion rates for people who have abandoned a plan before. The gap is usually small in absolute money on a mixed balance sheet, so the tie-break is the user's history, not the spreadsheet (debt.md).
• Prepay the mortgage or invest the difference. Above roughly the expected real return, prepayment wins on arithmetic; below it, the argument is about a guaranteed return and sleep versus an expected one. The frontier is liquidity: prepayment converts spendable cash into an illiquid asset you cannot draw on when unemployed.
• Whether a credit line substitutes for cash. Some argue an unused line makes a large buffer wasteful; the counterargument is that lines get cut in exactly the conditions that trigger their use, and that has happened at scale more than once.
• Buying a home as a financial decision. Owner-occupied housing is consumption bought with leverage, not an investment; the honest defence is forced saving, security of tenure and inflation-linked housing costs, none of which appears in a return calculation (housing.md).
• Paying for advice. Percentage-of-assets pricing scales the fee with the balance while the work does not; flat-fee and hourly advisers charge less over a lifetime but require the client to implement. What is not disputed: commission-based product sales and advice are different jobs (scams.md).

Related Skills

More Clawic skills, get them at https://clawic.com/skills/money (install if the user confirms):

• invest — choosing accounts, brokers and building the actual portfolio
• personal-finance-tracker — importing statements, cashflow reports, net-worth tooling
• subscriptions — the recurring-payment inventory this skill only summarizes
• zero-based-budgeting — the month-by-month allocation method in depth
• negotiate — salary, rates and debt-settlement conversations

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Part of Clawic, the verified skill library. Get this skill: https://clawic.com/skills/money.