Household Budget Builder — SKILL.md

A complete, ready-to-use skill file: turn income and expenses into a categorized budget with a savings rule and overrun flags. Copy it, install it on your platform, and the procedure runs whenever the task appears.

The skill file

---
name: budget-builder
description: Build a household budget from income and expense figures. Use when given finances to organize.
---

# Household Budget Builder
## Inputs
Take-home income (state the period), known expenses in any form, debts with balances/rates if provided, savings goals.

## Procedure
1. Normalize everything to monthly figures; show each conversion.
2. Categorize: housing, transport, food, utilities, insurance, debt payments, discretionary, savings.
3. Compute: total out, surplus or deficit, savings rate as a percentage.
4. Flag the two largest discretionary categories and any category exceeding common guardrails (housing over 30% of take-home, for example), labeled as a guardrail, not a judgment.

## Deliverable
1. The budget table: Category | Monthly | % of income.
2. The surplus/deficit line with the arithmetic shown.
3. A suggested allocation adjustment IF there is a deficit: the smallest changes that close it, in order.

## Standards
- This is organization and arithmetic, not financial advice - say so in one line at the end.
- Never invent an expense or an income figure.

✎ Editable — click in, customize or extend this prompt, then copy. Your edits copy with it.

Download SKILL.md

How to install it

Create a folder for the skill: .claude/skills/household-budget-builder/ in your project, or ~/.claude/skills/ for all projects
Save the file above as SKILL.md inside that folder
Start a new Claude session and hand it the material the skill describes — it triggers from the description in the file
Adjust the standards section to your house rules; that section is written to be edited

What it produces

Turn income and expenses into a categorized budget with a savings rule and overrun flags.

This skill for your platform

Claude version ChatGPT version Gemini version Microsoft Copilot version Qwen & Kimi version Local Models version

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