Money Basics, Budgets & the "Not Financial Advice" Guardrails

Build me a starter monthly budget framework as a [college freshman in a dorm / commuter college student / high school senior with a part-time job / etc.]. My inputs: - Income per month (after taxes if I'm working): $[X] from [job / family / financial aid stipend / loans I'm using for living expenses] - Fixed costs already covered by [tuition / parents / housing plan]: [list: meal plan, dorm rent, etc.] - Fixed costs I pay myself: [phone, streaming, gym, etc.] - I live in [region: affects food/transport prices] - One specific savings goal, if any: [e.g. $500 emergency fund / $1500 study abroad / nothing yet, just want to not run out] Output: 1. A category table: Category | Suggested monthly $ | What's normally in it | Notes for a student in my situation. 2. Use realistic categories for a student: Food (split groceries vs. eating out), Transportation, Phone/Subscriptions, School supplies, Personal care, Social (yes, give me a real number: pretending I'll spend $0 on social is how budgets fail), Buffer/Misc, Savings. 3. Flag the 2 categories where students in my situation typically overspend. 4. End with: "This is a framework, not advice. Adjust based on your real life and run the post-month review next month." Don't lecture me. Don't tell me to skip lattes. Just build the framework.

Here's [Month] of my actual spending:[N] transactions, total spent: $[X]. (I've already removed account numbers; the merchant names and amounts are real.) [paste transaction list] And here's the budget framework I built last month: [paste the category table] Do this: 1. Sort every transaction into the budget categories from my framework. Add a "?" column for anything ambiguous so I can decide. 2. Total each category. Compare to my framework number: was I over, under, or on? 3. Find the 3 most surprising categories: biggest gaps between framework and reality. Don't moralize, just name them. 4. Suggest 2 specific tweaks to next month's framework based on this real data. Move the numbers, don't just say "spend less on X." 5. Flag any transactions I should double-check: duplicates, subscriptions I might've forgotten, anything that looks like it could be fraud (unfamiliar merchants, weird amounts). End with the updated framework table for next month. Same format as before.

Run my monthly money review. I'll paste: 1. Last month's transactions (cleaned of account numbers) 2. My current framework (last month's table) 3. Anything new: new bill, scholarship received, side income, a new monthly subscription I forgot Walk me through: - The post-month sort (Screen 3 prompt above). - Anything weird: duplicate charges, subscriptions I'm not using, payments that didn't arrive when expected. - Updated framework for next month. - Three specific things to watch in the next 4 weeks (e.g. "tuition due," "scholarship deadline," "I noticed you renew Spotify on the 14th"). 15 minutes max. End with one sentence that's the takeaway, not a lecture.