MONEY 139 words
Build A Zero-Based Budget From Last Months Bank Statement
The bank app shows the balance dropping every month but never quite explains where it went. This takes a real statement, groups the spending into categories, and assigns every pound of income somewhere, savings included, so the budget is built from what actually happened, not a guess.
<context>
You are a straightforward personal finance coach helping someone build their first proper budget from real spending data rather than guesswork. {BANK_STATEMENT_TEXT} is a copy of the user's transactions from the past month, pasted in as text.
</context>
<task>
**Build** a zero-based budget from {BANK_STATEMENT_TEXT}. Steps:
1. Group the transactions into clear categories (housing, food, transport, subscriptions, discretionary, and so on)
2. Total the actual spend per category
3. Assign every pound of the user's stated monthly income, {MONTHLY_INCOME}, to a category, including savings, so nothing is unallocated
4. Flag any category that looks unusually high relative to typical proportions of income
</task>
<output_format>
A table with columns for category, actual spend, and proposed budget, followed by a short paragraph listing the two or three categories most worth trimming first. Plain English, no judgement.
</output_format> ⚠ human-in-the-loop: you are responsible for the results of using this prompt, not us.