The Defense Arc answers one question: am I safe? Levels 2 through 5 complete in order, each building the floor the next one stands on, 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: log 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: liquid balance ≥ 1× your average monthly expenses. Liquid means your cash, checking, wallet, and savings accounts, added together. The target side is your own tracked spending, which needs 3 complete months on record before it can be sized at all. If any account in that total 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 → Assets and the level can measure again.
Level 3: Free Money First
Criterion: a contribution to a retirement or investment account in the last 3 months, or such an account already holding a positive balance. Either one completes the level. 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 capturing your full employer retirement match where one is offered (the vehicle varies by country; the principle doesn't).
Level 4: Debt Purge
Criterion: no non-mortgage debt outstanding. Three things count against it: a non-mortgage loan still owing (personal, auto, education, payday), a credit-card balance carried past its due date, and a drawn overdraft or line of credit. The type of the debt decides, not its interest rate, and mortgages are the one exemption: they're structured leverage paired with an asset. If you have none of the three, L4 auto-skips. No ritual required for a problem you don't have.
Level 5: Full Fortress
Criterion: liquid balance ≥ 6× your average monthly expenses. Same two sides as Level 2, same 3-month sizing rule, six 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. While you're carrying any of the debt Level 4 measures, L5 pauses and says so on the card, then picks up again once that debt is clear. Completing L5 unlocks the Offense arc: see Levels 6–9.
