You will build a one-page dashboard of the few figures that affect your own money, with sources and decision rules.
By now you have built several pieces: a summary of the latest MAS statement in lesson 1.4, a rate stress test in 2.5, a personal inflation tracker in 3.4, a recession playbook in 4.5, a job-loss runway in 5.5 and a currency cost plan in 6.5. Each answers one question. What is missing is a single page that brings the few numbers that matter to you into one place, with the rules that tell you when to act on them, and a fixed date to look at it.
That page is your personal economic dashboard, and the brief for this project is simple. Build a one-page dashboard with no more than eight economic figures that affect your own money. For each figure, record where it comes from, how often it is published, its current value, and the date you will next check it. Link each one to a specific decision in your finances and the rule for acting on it. Then book a quarterly review and stop checking the figures in between.
The limit of eight is deliberate. A dashboard with thirty numbers becomes another news feed. The point is to watch only what connects to a decision you will actually make.
Start from your decisions and work back to the statistics. Look at each piece of work from the earlier modules and ask which published figure feeds it.
For most households with a home loan and savings, the list draws from these:
Three-month compounded SORA, from MAS, if you have a floating rate loan. Headline and MAS core inflation, from the Department of Statistics and the MAS and Ministry of Trade and Industry release, to compare with your own tracker. Your own 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 Trade and Industry. The latest MAS monetary policy decision, as summarised in lesson 1.4. The exchange rates for currencies you spend or invest in.
Drop anything that does not 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 either. Swap in something that matters to you, such as the T-bill cut-off yield if you hold T-bills.
For each figure, write 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 when the next release after your review date will be.
Then enter today's value, taken from the source release itself, as lesson 7.1, How a headline is built and what it leaves out, showed you, and the date you took it. Write the comparison the figure uses, such as year-on-year, so that you compare like with like next quarter.
This is what turns a list of numbers into a dashboard. Next to each figure, write the decision it informs and the rule that says when you will act, in the style of lesson 7.3, Rules that stop you acting on the news.
Marcus and Grace's dashboard, as an example, links three-month compounded SORA to their mortgage, with the rule: "Six months before lock-in ends, compare packages; switch if two-year savings beat costs." It links their industries' retrenchment figures to their runway: "If retrenchments in either of our industries rise for two quarters running, raise our buffer target by two months." It links the gap between their personal inflation and the headline to their spending plan: "If our own rate is more than two points above headline for two quarters, review the budget categories driving it." They picked those figures and thresholds for their own situation, and yours should come from yours.
Some figures will not have a direct rule. That is fine if they give context for another one, for example GDP alongside retrenchments. If a figure has neither a rule nor a reason, drop it.
Choose a fixed date each quarter, ideally a few days after the main releases you track, and put it in your calendar as a recurring event. On that date, update each value, check each rule, act where a rule says to, and note what you did in your decision log.
Between reviews, you do not need to check the dashboard. When a big headline lands, your cooling-off rule applies, and the next review date is when you look.
A finished dashboard is one page, in a spreadsheet or a document. It has up to eight rows. Each row shows the figure, source, frequency, today's value and the date it was taken, the comparison used, the next check date, the linked decision, and the rule. At the top sits your five-line MAS summary from lesson 1.4. At the bottom is the date of your first quarterly review, already in your calendar.
When you open it in three months, it should take under an hour to update, and it should tell you clearly whether anything requires action. Most quarters, the answer will be no, and that is the dashboard doing its job. Gather the sheets you built across the course, open the source websites, and put your page together.
Build the dashboard with your figures, sources, linked decisions and rules, enter the current values and book your first quarterly review.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).