Every file is worked the same way: ten steps, in a fixed order, applied to whatever cash the household actually has. The order does not change between cases, and it is never re-derived to suit a conclusion we had already reached.

How a case is worked

Money is a tool. A good financial plan should help someone build the life they actually want, not simply produce the largest possible number decades from now.

So before the ten steps run, three things have to be established:

Then we work the numbers.

We establish the subject’s goals and current position, identify the decisions with the most leverage, build the cash-flow path, test the alternatives and show what changes when the assumptions change.

Budgets are treated as tools for alignment, not punishment. Optimization starts with the decisions that actually matter rather than shaving insignificant amounts from everyday life. When reasonable people could choose differently, the case says so.

The ten steps

#	Step	What it funds	Why it sits here
1	Essential debt payments	Contractual minimums on every liability currently due	Missing these is default. Nothing below matters if the floor gives way
2	Basic living expenses	Essential expenses only — housing, utilities, food, transport, insurance	Discretionary spending is not one of the ten steps. Where a case protects a lifestyle budget, that is a documented input, never a hidden exception
3	Starter emergency reserve	One month of basic living expenses	One month is what stops the next small problem going straight back onto a card. It sits above the match because a household with no cash undoes progress faster than a match builds it
4	Employer match capture	Contributions up to the employer’s match	The only guaranteed return on the list. Declining it is declining pay
5	High-interest debt	Everything above the band — and, by default, everything inside it	Above 8% this is not a close call. Between 5% and 8% it is — see below. Deferred liabilities are excluded either way: nothing is due, so there is nothing to be aggressive about
6	Full reserve and short-term goals	The rest of the case’s chosen reserve, then goals within three years	The reserve target is a case input, usually three to twelve months. It completes here rather than at step 3 so it never outranks guaranteed returns or expensive debt
7	Retirement maximisation	Remaining tax-advantaged room — 401(k), IRA, HSA	Room is computed net of step 4 and anything already being deferred, against that tax year’s published limits
8	Low-interest debt	Everything at or below 5% APR, plus deferred liabilities	At or below 5%, investing instead is the better expected outcome and the risk difference is small. Deferred liabilities sit here regardless of rate
9	Long-term savings	Goals beyond three years, or with no horizon recorded	A goal without a date is treated as long-term rather than urgent
10	Taxable investing	Everything still unallocated	The terminal sink. Every dollar lands somewhere, which is what lets the totals reconcile to the cent

The three rules that decide almost everything

The band, not a line. At or below 5.00% APR a debt waits until step 8. Above 8.00% APR it is repaid at step 5. Between the two it is contested: the arithmetic is close enough that reasonable people choose differently, and no threshold we could publish would make that untrue.

A contested debt is repaid by default, because repayment is a certain return and the expected-return advantage of investing is not. A case may invest instead — and when it does, the file names the debt, the rate, and what the other choice would have cost. When reasonable people could choose differently, the case says so.

The starter reserve. One month of basic living expenses at step 3. Not three, not six. The larger reserve a case selects is completed later, at step 6.

The horizon. Three years. A goal at or inside it is short-term and funds at step 6. Beyond it — or with no date recorded — it is long-term and waits for step 9.

What the Method does not do

The Method allocates the cash a household already has. It has no step for cancelling a commitment, selling an asset, changing jobs, moving, or renegotiating anything.

That matters more often than it sounds. Some households have nothing left to allocate — steps 1 and 2 consume everything, the order stalls at step 3 and no amount of re-sequencing moves it. When that happens the finding sits upstream of the Method rather than inside it, and an order of operations is the wrong tool to reach for. We say so plainly in the file rather than pretending the ten steps solved it.

When we deviate

The order is fixed. It is not sacred. A rule applied where it does obvious harm is not rigour, it is laziness wearing rigour’s clothes.

So we depart from it when a case warrants, under three conditions that are not optional:

A reader who sees one order applied across many different lives — including the times we set it aside, with the reasons and the costs — is looking at a body of work rather than a series of opinions. That is the whole claim. Standards sets out the rest of it.