You will write a one-page investment policy statement covering your whole long-term portfolio.
Farhan started this course with one world equity ETF, some idle cash and no idea what his bonds were for, because he had none. He now has a folder of sheets, each one a decision with a reason behind it. This project turns that folder into the page he will actually use: a signed, dated, one-page investment policy statement for his whole long-term portfolio.
Yours is the same project. Set aside about an hour, open every sheet you have made since module 1, and work through the steps below.
The brief: write one page that tells anyone, including future you, how your long-term money is invested and how it will be run. Cover your allocation, your funds, your rules and your accounts in plain sentences. Aim for a page short enough to reread in five minutes, yet specific enough that two different people reading it would make the same decisions on the same day.
Everything on the page should already exist somewhere in your sheets. If you find a gap while writing, such as a rule you never set, go back to the lesson that covers it and settle it before you continue.
Use the headings you wrote for lesson 8.1, What goes in an investment policy statement. The first few headings hold the decisions from modules 1 to 5:
Goals and horizon, in one sentence Your one-line allocation from lesson 1.4, with the bad year figure updated to today's values Each index from your index map in lesson 2.4, with the fund you chose for it in lesson 3.5 The share class of each fund from lesson 4.3, with its reason in a few words Your home bias and currency rules from lesson 5.4, copied word for word
Farhan's version of this part takes six lines. Here is the allocation line, with made-up figures: "Long-term money of S$70,000: 65% shares, 35% bonds. In a bad year with shares down 30%, I expect to see about S$13,650 disappear on paper, and I will not sell." The dollar figure is higher than the one he wrote in module 1, because his long-term money has grown.
Next come the operating rules from modules 6 and 7. Copy your rebalancing rule from lesson 6.2 word for word, and put the note you wrote for yourself in lesson 6.4, Test your rule on a made-up crash, right under it. Your account map from lesson 7.4 shrinks to a sentence or two: which account holds what, whether CPF counts, and where new money goes first. Your contribution plan says how much you invest, how often and through which account. The order you will draw from your accounts, from lesson 8.1, closes this part.
Keep these as sentences, not as copies of your sheets. "Shares sit in SRS and my cash account, bonds in my cash account. CPF is not counted. New money goes to whichever asset is furthest below target" is enough. The sheets themselves go behind the page.
Add your rules for falls and booms from lesson 8.2, Rules for when markets fall and when they boom. Name the person you will talk to and the waiting period you will keep. Add your list of things you will not do. Then add your yearly review date and the checklist from lesson 8.3.
Read the whole page aloud. Anything that sounds like a forecast, such as "markets always recover", comes out. Anything vague, such as "rebalance when needed", gets replaced with the actual rule. Anything you would not do on a bad day gets rewritten until you would.
Sign and date the page. It sounds formal, and the formality helps: a signed page feels like a promise you made to yourself, and the date tells you how old each decision is. Under your signature, write the date of your next yearly review and put that date in your calendar now, with a reminder a week before.
Keep the page somewhere you will find it quickly in a panic: printed in a drawer, pinned in your notes app, or saved next to your broker's login details. Then attach your supporting sheets: the allocation draft, index map, comparison sheet with sources and dates, home and currency rules, crash test, and account map.
A finished statement fits on one page and passes three tests. A stranger could run your portfolio from it for a year without asking you anything. You could read it on the worst day of a crash and know what to do in under five minutes. And every line traces back to a sheet with the working behind it.
Farhan's final page is not elegant. It has one crossed-out line where he changed his bond index in module 5, with the date written beside it, and a handwritten note at the bottom about his sister being the person he calls before breaking a rule. He signs it on a Sunday evening and puts the next review date in his calendar.
It will not be the last version. Each yearly review may change a line or two, and a major life event may change more. That is fine, as long as every change goes through the review with its reason written down. What you are building is the habit of running your money from a page you wrote, rather than from the mood of the week.
Submit your signed and dated one-page investment policy statement with the supporting sheets from earlier modules attached.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).