Build a one-page dashboard of the few figures that affect your own money, with their sources and your decision rules.
Marcus and Grace are a couple with a mortgage, and each of them works in a different industry. They want one page that shows them, four times a year, whether any economic figure means they should change something about their money.
Each project from earlier in the course answers one question: the rate stress test in lesson 2.5, the personal inflation tracker in lesson 3.4, the recession playbook in lesson 4.5, the job-loss runway in lesson 5.5 and the currency cost plan in lesson 6.5. What's missing is a single page that holds the few numbers that matter, the rules for acting on them, and a fixed date to look at them. That page is a personal economic dashboard. It has no more than eight economic figures that affect your money. Each figure has its source, how often it's published, its current value and the date of the next check, and each is linked to a decision and a rule for acting on it. You review it on a fixed date every quarter.
The limit of eight is deliberate. A dashboard with thirty numbers turns into another news feed, and you end up reading it the way you read headlines. Only watch figures that connect to a decision you'll actually make.
Start from your decisions and work back to the statistics. Go through each earlier project and ask which published figure feeds it. This list of candidates suits most households with a home loan and savings:
three-month compounded SORA, published by MAS, which matters if you have a floating rate loan headline inflation and MAS core inflation, from the Department of Statistics and from the joint release by MAS and the Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry (METI, called the Ministry of Trade and Industry until 1 October 2026), to compare with your personal inflation tracker your personal inflation rate, from the tracker you built in lesson 3.4 the unemployment rate and retrenchments in your industry, from the Ministry of Manpower quarterly GDP growth, from the Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry (METI, formerly MTI, renamed with effect from 1 October 2026), now at meti.gov.sg the latest MAS monetary policy decision, the one you summarised in lesson 1.4 exchange rates for the currencies you spend or invest in
Drop any figure that doesn't connect to a decision. If you have no floating rate debt and no plans to borrow, SORA may not earn a place. If you never travel and hold no foreign investments, exchange rates may not earn one either. Add figures that matter to you in their place. For example, if you hold T-bills, add the T-bill cut-off yield. Whatever you end up with, keep it to eight or fewer.
For each figure, write down the publisher, the name of the release and how often it comes out: daily, monthly or quarterly. Look up the release calendars on the publishers' websites and note the next release date after your review date.
Take today's value from the source release itself, using the method from lesson 7.1, "How a headline is built and what it leaves out", and record the date you took it. Also write down the comparison the figure uses, such as year-on-year, so that next quarter you compare like with like.
Linking each figure to a decision and a rule is what turns a list of numbers into a dashboard. Beside each figure, write the decision it informs and the rule for when you act. Write the rules in the style of lesson 7.3, "Rules that stop you acting on the news".
Marcus and Grace's page is the example here, and all their figures and thresholds are invented for illustration. They link three-month compounded SORA to their mortgage. Their rule is to compare packages six months before the lock-in ends, and to switch if the two-year savings beat the costs. They link the retrenchment figures for both their industries to their job-loss runway from lesson 5.5. If retrenchments in either industry rise for two quarters running, they raise their buffer target by two months. They also link the gap between their personal inflation and headline inflation to their spending plan. If their own rate is more than two points above headline for two quarters, they review the budget categories driving it.
They chose those figures and thresholds for their own situation. Base yours on your own situation and don't copy their numbers.
Some figures won't have a direct rule. Keep one of those only if it gives context for another figure, the way GDP does when you read it alongside retrenchments. Drop any figure that has neither a rule nor a reason to be there.
Pick a fixed review date each quarter, ideally a few days after the main releases you track, and set it as a recurring calendar event. On that date, update each value, check each rule, act where a rule tells you to, and note what you did in your decision log.
You don't need to check the dashboard between reviews. When a big headline lands, apply your cooling-off rule, look up your next review date and deal with it then.
The finished page can be a spreadsheet or a document. The five-line MAS summary from lesson 1.4 goes at the top. Below it are up to eight rows with these columns: figure, source, frequency, today's value and the date you took it, comparison used, next check date, linked decision and rule. The bottom of the page holds the date of your first quarterly review, which should already be in your calendar. When you open the page in three months, the update should take under an hour and show you clearly whether anything needs action. In most quarters nothing will, and that means the dashboard is working.
Gather the sheets you built across the course, open the source websites, and put your page together.
Build your dashboard: list your figures, sources, linked decisions and rules, enter today's values, and book your first quarterly review.
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