You will bring the course together into a playbook you keep and review.
Over this course you've built a lot of separate pieces: a decision log, a reference point review, a map of your mental accounts, a spending diary, a saving rule and a commitment, a trade audit, a cooling-off checklist, if-then rules and a set of defaults and frictions. Scattered across a notes app and a few spreadsheets, they're easy to lose track of. This project pulls them into one short document you can read in five minutes, keep up to date and hand to someone you trust.
Write a money behaviour playbook of one to two pages. It should name the two or three patterns that cost you most, show the evidence for each from your own records, and set out everything you've put in place to limit them. It ends with a review date and the name of the person who will help you stick to it.
Keep it short. A playbook is something you return to in a bad moment or a quarterly review, so it has to be quick to read. If yours runs past two pages, you've probably included rules you don't really need.
Go back through your log, diary, mental accounts map and audit. Pick the two or three patterns that cost you the most money or caused the most regret. For each, write its name, one line on how it shows up for you, and the evidence: specific decisions and amounts.
"Present bias" on its own is a label. "Present bias: delayed starting to save for seven months, about S$2,100 not saved" is evidence. The evidence is what will convince you on a bad day that the rule is worth following.
Under each pattern, list what you've put in place against it. That includes your if-then rules from lesson 8.1, the defaults and frictions from lesson 8.2, and any parts of your cooling-off checklist from lesson 7.4 that target it. Some measures will cover more than one pattern; list them once under the pattern they matter most for.
Then add your cooling-off checklist in full, with its threshold, waiting periods, questions and person.
Copy in your automatic saving rule and your commitment device from lesson 5.4, with the amount, date, account, trigger and the conditions under which you'd change them. Note the date you last checked they were working.
Write the date of your first quarterly review from lesson 8.3, and the three questions you'll ask. Then name one person who'll help you stick to the playbook. It could be a partner, sibling or friend. Their job isn't to manage your money. It's to know your rules, to be the call you make before breaking one, and to ask you once a quarter how the review went.
Here is a shortened version of Darren's.
His first pattern is stress borrowing. The evidence is a S$500 cash advance in August, taken while S$16,000 sat in savings, and two earlier advances in the past year. Against it he has a rule to wait a night and call his sister before borrowing from any source, his card paid in full by GIRO, and his buffer rule, which now allows clearing expensive debt.
His second is late-night and tired spending. His diary showed S$328 in two weeks from late-night scrolling and tiredness, around S$700 a month. Against it: a rule to list anything wanted on his phone after 10pm and decide the next morning, saved cards removed from four apps, and greyscale on his phone from 10pm.
His third is present bias in saving. Seven months of delay, about S$2,100 not saved. Against it: S$300 moved on payday automatically, and half of his next pay rise added to that transfer within a week of the first new payslip.
Below those sit his cooling-off checklist (S$300 threshold, 48 hours up to S$2,000, seven days above it or for any financial product, five questions, his sister) and his review date, the first Sunday of next quarter. He shared the playbook with his sister, who printed it and put it on her fridge "for emergencies".
Hui Min's is similar in shape and different in content. Her patterns are the purchase price as a reference point, herding on tips, and checking too often, with evidence from her audit totalling about S$3,195.
Write your own playbook now, share it with the person you've chosen, and put the first quarterly review in your calendar.
Write your playbook, share it with one person you trust, and set your first quarterly review.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).