Write a one-page set of rules for how you use AI with your own finances.
Good habits with AI and money tend to slip when you are tired, hurried, or asking a quick question on your phone. A one-page set of personal rules deals with this by making the decisions in advance, so they hold up when you are not thinking carefully. Writing the page takes about forty minutes. Most of its value comes from having decided ahead of time, more than from the writing itself.
Your page covers five things: your never list, your redaction routine, the tasks you hand to AI, the numbers you always check and where you check them, and when you stop and get licensed advice. Keep each rule brief enough to remember and specific enough to follow without thinking.
Write the rules for your real money, your real documents and the assistant you actually use. A rule you would never follow is worse than having no rule, because it trains you to ignore the page.
Priya, a learner who appears throughout the course, has built a budget from a redacted bank export, with a source list beside it. Her chat history is cleaner than it was a month ago. What she lacks is a way to keep these habits going when she is tired, rushed, or asking a quick question on her phone at lunch. Last year she pasted a statement into an assistant on a busy weeknight while half watching something else.
So she wrote a page of rules. Part of it is below, as a model for tone and length:
Never paste passwords, OTPs, Singpass details, card numbers or security answers. Never paste anything containing my NRIC or Mum's. Before pasting from a document: copy only the text I need, replace names and numbers with placeholders, delete balances, read it through once. AI sorts my transactions and explains terms. It never supplies a number I act on. Every sum goes in the budget file with labelled inputs, and I estimate first. Rates, caps and fees come from the source list tab, checked on the day. Any insurance decision, or anything over the sum I have set, goes to an adviser I have checked on the MAS register.
Her full page has eleven rules and fits on one screen. She saved it as the first tab of her budget file, so she sees it every month.
Start with Rule 1, your never list: the specific items that never go into an assistant, from Lesson 7.1, What never goes into an assistant. Write them in your own words, then add the "avoid" items that apply to you. If you regularly handle a parent's finances, the rule should name that. If you work in financial services and see client data, state plainly that client data never goes into a personal assistant.
Rule 2 is your redaction routine, from Lesson 7.2, Redact first, and check your settings. Write it as ordered steps to follow before you paste anything that began as a real document. First, copy only the text you need into a blank note. Then replace names and numbers with placeholders, and delete any addresses and balances you do not need. Read it through once, and only then paste. Under the steps, record the privacy settings you chose and your note on how long your provider keeps chats and files.
Next come the hand-over and checking rules, drawn from Modules 1 to 5. The jobs to give an assistant are sorting transactions, explaining terms and clauses, drafting emails and questions, and planning what to check. Start your list of jobs you won't give it with two: supplying any figure you will act on, and doing arithmetic in prose.
Then name the numbers you always verify at source. State your calculation method: the formula goes in a spreadsheet, every input gets a labelled cell, and you estimate first. Write down what counts as a confirmed claim: one you found in the document, with a date. For sources, point to the list you built in Lesson 6.4, Build your money source list. You do not need to copy every link onto the page; one line saying where the list is kept is enough.
Last is the stop rule, based on Lesson 7.3, AI output versus licensed financial advice. Make it concrete, with both the trigger and the person you would go to. Triggers might include a sum above an amount you choose, any insurance decision your family would rely on, replacing an existing policy, a property purchase, or a tax situation you do not fully understand. Under the Financial Advisers Act, advising on investment products, including life policies, is regulated. The firm giving that advice must hold a financial adviser's licence or be an exempt financial adviser, such as a bank or insurer, and the individual who advises you on its behalf must be an appointed representative. Before you rely on an adviser, check them on the MAS register, as Priya does, and see the MAS page on financial advisers for which products are covered.
A finished page is short, written in your own words, and specific enough that another person could judge whether you followed it. Keep it somewhere you will see it whenever you work on your money, as Priya does with the first tab of her budget file. Expect the page to change when your situation changes, and revise it then.
Write your page now, in one sitting, and keep the first draft even if it feels rough.
Write your one-page AI money rules and save them. Use them on one real task this week and note anything you had to change.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).