Finances · built & verified July 13, 2026

The money map is live: one doc, one monthly sweep, zero guesswork

You asked whether we actually have processes that notice "this account hit its limit — time to move money." We didn't — the targets existed on paper, scattered and partly contradictory. Now we do: a single canonical rulebook, an automated first-of-the-month sweep, and a tested pipeline that hands you the exact transfers to make.

Where every dollar sits, and why

The full spec lives in docs/money-map.md in the finances repo — the single source of truth. Every other document now points there instead of restating numbers.

Account	Role	Target	Overflow goes to…
Business checkingChase PERFBUS	S-corp operating float — ~2 months of payroll + overhead	cap $40k	Cash Plus, monthly, booked as an owner distribution
Personal checkingChase	Paycheck landing pad, kept deliberately thin	~$4k	Cash Plus, monthly
Cash PlusVanguard — the hub	All card autopays pull from here. $115k liquidity floor (~5 months of burn) + $30k tax reserve	$145k	Brokerage — invested, not parked
BrokerageVanguard, core index	Absorbs everything above the targets: 80% VTI / 20% VXUS, dividends reinvested	no cap	— (buy and hold)

Untouched by the sweep: the 529 (auto glide path), SEP IRA, BTC IRA, Caroline's brokerage, and the HSA. The ~$15k UI position rides along as the play bucket under the 5% rule. One open variable is flagged in the doc: if the Gusto withholding bump replaces quarterly estimates this fall, the $30k reserve shrinks and the Cash Plus target drops toward $115k.

The 1st-of-the-month sweep

01 · 7:23 AMCron firesA standing job on the always-on machine, first of every month.

02 · agentClaude computesPulls live balances from Tiller, runs the algorithm, runs health checks.

03 · todoistTask landsOne Finance task with the exact transfer lines and buy order.

04 · you~10 minutesYou execute the moves. No agent ever touches money — computes only.

The math, in order:

Skim checking: anything above $4,000 moves to Cash Plus (skip under $1k).
Skim the business: anything above the $40,000 cap moves to Cash Plus as an owner distribution (skip under $2k), with the FreshBooks entry booked after it posts.
Invest the excess: whatever Cash Plus holds above $145,000 after those sweeps becomes a two-line buy order — 80% VTI / 20% VXUS (skip under $2k).

The same run also verifies every card's autopay actually executed, scans for anomalies and dead account feeds, logs a net-worth snapshot to a running ledger, and — on quarterly runs — nags about the manual balances that go stale (home value, BTC IRA) plus the upcoming estimated-tax date.

Tested tonight — and the test earned its keep

I ran the full pipeline end-to-end in dry-run mode before trusting it. It worked, and it caught a genuinely dangerous edge case:

⚠️ The in-flight trap

Tiller's feed hadn't yet absorbed yesterday's restructure — the $18.5k Cash Plus → brokerage transfer and the VTI/VXUS buys. The raw algorithm therefore said "invest another $20,100," which would have moved the same money twice.

The agent cross-checked recent activity, spotted the in-flight transfer, adjusted the balance, and correctly skipped the invest leg. That safeguard is now a codified rule in the sweep prompt — the in-flight guard — not a judgment call.

What the dry run would have told you to do this month

One move only: skim ~$1,599 from personal checking to Cash Plus. The business account is under its cap, and Cash Plus — after the restructure — sits almost exactly on its $145k target. The plan landed right on the number.

Documentation, de-noised

Your instinct was right that the rules were smeared across files with contradictions. Fixed:

One canonical doc — money-map.md owns every target, threshold, and the algorithm. Repo instructions forbid restating its numbers elsewhere.
Contradiction resolved — the old docs said the business sweep was quarterly, but the personal engine needs that NANZ money monthly. Now monthly everywhere, with supersession notes at the old spots.
Missing pipe found — paychecks land in checking while autopays drain Cash Plus; no rule ever moved money between them. The checking skim closes that loop.
Old docs demoted, not deleted — the allocation review keeps the why, the restructure checklist keeps the one-time execution history; both point to the map for current rules.
Still to design — the weekly categorize-and-flag routine and the client-loss playbook, tracked separately in the vault.

What happens next

Sat, Aug 1 — first live run. Expect a Todoist task that morning; it should include the first NANZ repayment money and the first true autopay verification (the Citi cycles land ~Aug 10).
If the task ever doesn't appear — one fallback command reruns it, documented in the map; or ask Claude in any finances session to "run the monthly sweep."
Everything committed — docs, prompt, cron wrapper, and the dry-run ledger are in the repo (f87b90b).

Prepared by Claude · finances project · canonical spec: ~/Projects/finances/docs/money-map.md