Personal Finance Mastery

Works through the legal tax-reduction sequence - tax-advantaged account priority, standard-vs-itemized decision math, tax-loss harvesting, income timing, and Roth-vs-traditional rules - and produces a personal tax checklist. Use when someone asks "how do I pay less in taxes", "should I itemize", "Roth or traditional", "what is tax-loss harvesting", or is doing year-end planning or reviewing withholding. Do NOT use for the broader ordering of savings and debt priorities - use financial-planner instead; for investing fundamentals beyond account tax treatment - use investment-basics; for projecting retirement account balances - use retirement-projection.

Projects retirement readiness from savings rate, target nest egg, and compound growth - computes the required portfolio via safe-withdrawal-rate math, years to financial independence, and pension or Social Security offsets, with a runnable calculator. Use when someone asks "how much do I need to retire", "am I on track to retire at 60", "what does my savings rate get me", or "can I retire early". General financial education, not personalized investment advice. Do NOT use for choosing funds or setting an asset allocation - use investment-basics instead; do NOT use for a full financial plan with budgeting and insurance - use financial-planner instead.

Sizes an emergency fund from essential expenses and household risk tier, picks the right account, and builds the funding and replenishment schedule. Use when someone asks "how much should I have in savings", "how big should my emergency fund be", "where should I keep my emergency fund", or "should I save or pay off debt first". Do NOT use for sequencing debt payoff itself - use debt-payoff-planner instead; for planned irregular expenses like car registration or gifts, those are sinking funds - use budget-builder; for the full save-vs-invest ordering - use financial-planner.

Evaluates a major purchase with total cost of ownership, opportunity cost, affordability red lines, and a cooling-off rule, producing a scored buy/wait/walk verdict. Use when someone asks "should I buy this car", "can I afford this", "is this purchase a good idea", or is about to finance anything with a monthly payment. Do NOT use for fitting an approved purchase into the monthly plan - use budget-builder instead; for whether the purchase should outrank debt payoff or savings - use financial-planner; for home-purchase retirement trade-offs - use retirement-projection.

Builds a complete personal financial plan - a prioritized order of operations across budgeting, emergency savings, debt payoff, and goals - from the user's actual numbers, then routes each piece to the right specialist skill. Use when someone asks "help me get my finances in order", "where should my money go first", "should I pay off debt or save", "am I doing okay financially", or "build me a financial plan". Do NOT use for constructing the monthly budget itself - use budget-builder instead; for sequencing multiple debts - use debt-payoff-planner; for sizing the cash cushion - use emergency-fund-planner; for investing fundamentals - use investment-basics; for retirement readiness math - use retirement-projection; for lowering a tax bill - use tax-optimization; for evaluating one large purchase - use big-purchase-decision.

Teaches personal investing fundamentals - readiness checks, asset allocation, diversification with low-cost index funds, fee awareness, tax-advantaged account ordering, and rebalancing - and produces a written starter plan. Use when someone asks "how do I start investing", "what should my stock/bond split be", "are index funds enough", or "should I invest or pay off debt first". General financial education, not personalized investment advice. Do NOT use for a full multi-goal financial plan with budgeting and insurance - use financial-planner instead; do NOT use for modeling when someone can retire - use retirement-projection instead; for building the cash cushion first, see emergency-fund-planner.