You will be able to write decision rules that tie actions to your own situation rather than to headlines.
Grace keeps a note on her phone of money decisions she nearly made. There is the week she almost moved all their savings into a two-year deposit because a headline said rates had peaked. There is the night Marcus wanted to sell their unit trusts after a market fall dominated the news. And there is the morning he was ready to refinance after a Fed cut, which you met in lesson 7.2, Separate what changed from what was expected. Each one felt urgent at the time. None of them would have helped.
Knowing that you should not react to news is easy. Not reacting, when the news is loud and everyone around you is acting, is much harder. What works better than willpower is a small set of written rules that decide in advance what will make you act, so the headline has nothing to decide.
The first rule is to link each money decision to something in your own situation, and not to the news.
Your situation produces its own calendar of real decision points. A home loan's lock-in period ends on a known date, and that is when switching packages becomes possible without a penalty. A fixed deposit or T-bill matures, and the money needs a new home. Your job risk changes, because your company announces a hiring freeze or your role is restructured, as lesson 5.1, How the job market turns before the headlines do, described. A child's university fees come due. Each of these is a moment when a decision is actually required and you can act on it.
The news can inform what you decide at those moments. It should not decide when you decide. "Rates are falling" is not a trigger. "Our lock-in ends in March" is.
The second rule is to put rate-sensitive decisions on a calendar.
For a floating rate loan, set a check every six months or every year: compare your current rate with what new packages offer, and decide whether refinancing is worth the costs. For a loan with a lock-in, set a reminder a few months before it ends, since banks often let you lock in a new package ahead of time. For deposits and T-bills, the maturity date is your review date.
Then, on those dates, act on what you find. A review date only works if it replaces the urge to check every time rates make the news. Between reviews, the decision waits.
The third rule covers the moments when something feels urgent anyway. A cooling-off rule is a commitment not to make any money decision within a set number of days of a big headline: a market crash, a surprise rate move, a recession warning.
The number is yours to choose. A week works for many people. The point is to let the first wave of fear or excitement pass, and to let you check whether the news is really a surprise or was already expected, using the method in lesson 7.2.
When the cooling-off period ends, ask one question: has anything in my own situation changed? If your job, income, plans and timeline are the same, the decision you would have made in a panic usually looks much less attractive.
The rule has one sensible exception. A genuine emergency in your own life, such as a lost job or a medical bill, is not a headline, and your buffer exists for exactly that.
The fourth habit is a one-line note every time you make a money decision: the date, what you did, and why. "Fixed 2-year deposit at the bank's promotion, because it matures when the car loan ends." "Did not sell funds after the fall in March, per our playbook."
Months later, the log lets you check your reasoning against what happened, without the hindsight that rewrites memory. It also shows you which of your decisions came from your own triggers and which came from the news. Grace's note of near-misses was the beginning of her log.
A good rule names three things: what you will check, when you will check it, and what would make you act. Marcus and Grace's first three rules were these:
Six months before the loan's lock-in ends, compare our rate with at least three new packages, and switch if the saving over two years beats the switching costs. When any deposit or T-bill matures, place it according to our savings plan, whatever the rate headlines say that week. No change to our investments within seven days of any big market or rate headline, and none at all unless our job situation or our timeline has changed.
Notice that none of them requires a view on where rates or markets are going. Each one ties an action to their own dates and circumstances. Look at your own loans, deposits, investments and job, and think about which dates and events should be the ones that move you.
Write three decision rules for your own money that say what you will check, when, and what would make you act.
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