Personal Finance Health Check

Goal

Run a structured personal-finance review: collect the full financial picture (including the context people routinely omit), produce spending/saving/investing guidance grounded in life-cycle principles, then self-grade that guidance against a fixed set of diagnostic tests. This is educational analysis, not regulated financial advice.

Trigger

When you want a structured, repeatable financial review from AI instead of a one-off chat — it collects the context you would forget and checks the advice against life-cycle principles.

Steps

1. 1

   Gather my complete financial picture. Ask for anything missing before advising — do NOT proceed on a partial picture, because the omitted context (not the model) is what produces generic advice.

   • □Age, target retirement age, household (dependents, partner income)
   • □Income: annual after-tax, stability, and any expected large changes
   • □Liquidity: cash / emergency buffer in months of essential expenses
   • □Debt: balances and interest rates, especially anything above ~7%
   • □Retirement access: employer match, tax-advantaged accounts available
   • □Current savings and how they are allocated (stocks / bonds / cash / other)
   • □Goal in my own words, and my honest risk comfort
2. 2

   State the baseline assumptions you will use, and flag every gap. For each missing number, say what you will assume and how sensitive the advice is to it. Use ~2% real return for safe savings and the long-run historical average for diversified stocks; never assume market timing or above-market returns.

   • □List each assumption with the biggest risk if it is wrong
   • □Name the 2-3 missing inputs that would most change the answer
   • □Assume current tax and Social Security rules unless told otherwise
3. 3

   Produce the core guidance: a spending/saving split for working years, an age-appropriate asset allocation with a glide path that reduces equity as I age, an explicit rebalancing rule (calendar + threshold), account priority (match first, then tax-advantaged, then taxable), and a high-interest-debt plan. Describe any product generically and disclose it is one option, not an endorsement.

   • □Savings rate + spending target
   • □Allocation + age glide path
   • □Rebalancing rule: calendar AND threshold trigger
   • □Account priority order
   • □High-interest debt payoff vs. invest decision
4. 4

   Self-grade the guidance you just gave against the diagnostic tests below (these are the life-cycle checks the research proposes). For each, mark PASS or FIX and, if FIX, correct the guidance before finishing. Do not skip a test to look decisive.

   • □Consumption smoothing: does the plan avoid wild year-to-year swings, and let me spend savings down in retirement rather than hoard?
   • □Shock response: on job loss, does it use my buffer proportionally instead of panic-cutting?
   • □Diversification: is risky money mostly in broad funds, with only small single-stock/crypto exposure?
   • □Active rebalancing: is there a concrete rule to correct drift, not "stay the course"?
   • □Bias check: is every risk/savings assumption tied to my stated numbers, not to inferred traits (gender, apparent literacy, tone)?
5. 5

   Hand off responsibly. Summarize what to do this week, what would change the recommendation, and exactly what to verify with a licensed professional. Reinforce that this is education, not regulated advice.

   • □Top 3 actions for this week
   • □The 2-3 inputs that most move the plan
   • □What to confirm with a human advisor before acting

Output format

Return five sections: (1) Intake summary — the picture you collected and what is still missing. (2) Assumptions — each with its biggest risk. (3) The plan — savings rate, allocation + glide path, rebalancing rule, account priority, debt plan. (4) Diagnostic scorecard — the five tests above, each PASS/FIX, with any fixes already applied. (5) Handoff — this week's actions, what would change the advice, and what to verify with a licensed professional. Keep it concrete and grounded only in my stated numbers.