The Design Criteria

Five consistent criteria. Context-specific measures.

Money, Health, Joy, Time, and Sustainability help me judge whether the systems and decisions I’m building work for the life they are supposed to support.

NO UNIVERSAL SCORE. USE ONLY THE CRITERIA THAT APPLY.

The five criteria

Money

Financial resources, costs, savings, income, assets, risk, and whether the financial side of the solution works.

Health

Physical and mental capacity, treatment, recovery, function, stability, and whether the solution protects the health infrastructure that makes the rest of life possible.

Joy

Meaning, enjoyment, relationships, experiences, connection, fulfillment, and whether the result supports a life I want to live.

Time

Clock time, cognitive bandwidth, effort, attention, recovery time, flexibility, and whether the use of time works for the life I want.

Sustainability

Whether the larger arrangement is durable, maintainable, resilient, and compatible with real life over time.

The problem comes first. The criteria help test the answer.

1. Start with the real problem and identify only the criteria that materially apply.
2. Define what success looks like using problem-specific measures.
3. Separate expectations from observed results.
4. Report the relevant evidence and conclusion. There is no mandatory formula or verdict.

Health is the constraint I design around. Joy is the reason I design at all.

If a choice materially damages the health and capacity system that makes the rest of life possible, a financial or efficiency gain does not make it a successful solution.

Optimization is not the destination. Living is the point.

Completed Work Example

After earning just $6.28 over three years at 0.01%–0.03% APY with PNC, was moving my savings to EverBank at a 4.30% opening APY worth it?

Result: EverBank credited $603.11 in interest from May–December 2025, compared with approximately $4.43 at a hypothetical constant 0.03% APY using the same deposits and withdrawals—a $598.68 difference.

Conclusion: Keep EverBank Performance Savings. The $598.68 difference from the matched 0.03% APY model justified the less-than-one-hour setup, and the account met my requirements for accessibility, FDIC insurance, and fees. I'll reassess if its variable APY or account terms change enough to affect that decision.

See the full work

Tool used: EverBank Performance Savings

The Engineering Report

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