The Defense Arc answers one question: am I safe? Levels 2, 3 and 4 open together from the day you sign up, Level 5 waits until all three are holding, and Level 1 runs alongside them rather than gating them. Every criterion is a measurable fact about your data, detected automatically from what you record.
Level 1: Know Your Numbers
Criterion: save 5 transactions. Rows you type and rows you import both count. There's no deadline and no streak to keep, so a missed week costs you nothing. L1 is deliberately standalone: it tracks your habit with this app while later levels progress independently from your finances themselves.
Level 2: Starter Shield
Criterion: your emergency fund ≥ 1× your average monthly expenses. Your emergency fund is the set of accounts you count as one. Cash, checking, wallet and savings accounts count from the start, and you can add or remove any account that isn't a retirement account or a debt: open the account, use Edit account, and turn on Counts toward my emergency fund. The target side is your own tracked spending. After your first completed month with spending in it the level gives a provisional reading, labelled as one, and once 3 complete months are on record the target is settled. If any account you count holds a currency or asset with no rate for today, the balance reads as unknown rather than as a partial sum: set a rate in Settings → Currencies & Assets and the level can measure again. If no account counts, the level says so rather than reading zero.
Level 3: Free Money First
Criterion: a transfer or income into a retirement or investment account in the last 3 months, a recurring contribution rule at least 14 days old, or such an account already holding a positive balance. Any one of the three completes the level, and there's no minimum. Holding counts because someone living off their capital withdraws rather than contributes, and their L3 work is long done. The action the level points at is adding a contribution. If your employer matches what you put in, that match is the best return you will ever be offered, so take it first; the level itself never tests for one. (The vehicle varies by country; the principle doesn't.)
Level 4: Debt Purge
Criterion: nothing owing outside a home loan, or a loan you cannot clear early. Three things count against it: any other loan still owing 1.00 or more (personal, auto, education, payday), a credit card that carried interest on any of its last three closed statements, and a drawn overdraft or line of credit. A card blocks while any of its last three statements carried interest and clears after three consecutive clean ones; paying it to zero today doesn't lift it early. The type of the debt decides, not its interest rate. A home loan is exempt because it is the one proven way for most people to build equity in a home, and a loan you mark on its form as one you cannot clear early (a chit fund that runs to its term, or a loan written off at the end) is exempt because the level would be asking for something you can't do, or shouldn't. Until you've added a loan, a card or an overdraft, the Level 4 sheet asks whether you have any: if you have none, tap I have no loans or cards once and the level reads straight away; if you have any, add them instead. A home loan and a card you pay in full count nothing against the level.
Level 5: Full Fortress
Criterion: your emergency fund ≥ 6× your average monthly expenses. Same two sides as Level 2, the same provisional first reading and settled average, 6 months of cover instead of one. The capstone. Confidence has a number, and this is yours, computed from how you actually live rather than a rule of thumb. A Level 5 you have reached goes on hold while Level 2, 3 or 4 is under its target or waiting on data. Its card names the level holding it, and it picks up the day that level holds again. Reaching L5 opens the Offense arc: see Levels 6–9.
