You will be able to design a trial run that tests both your spending base and your time plan.
Every plan in this course so far has been built on paper. The spending base came from last year's statements and some educated guesses about life after work. The time plan from lesson 8.1 came from imagining days you have never actually lived. Either could be right, and either could be badly wrong. The only way to find out before you hand in your notice is to try them.
This lesson shows how to design a trial run that tests both halves of the plan, the money and the time, while you still have a salary to fall back on.
The first test is the simplest. For several months, live on the spending base you built in lesson 1.4, while you are still working.
Divide the yearly base by twelve to get a monthly figure. Move your salary into savings as usual, and give yourself only that monthly figure to spend. Count everything: bills, food, transport, gifts, the annual premium that falls due. For costs that will fall away after work, such as commuting, keep paying them from a separate pot so that they do not muddy the test.
Three to six months is a reasonable length. One month is too short, because a single month rarely includes the lumpy costs. A longer test catches more of them.
At the end, compare what you spent with the base. If you came in under it comfortably, the base is probably realistic. If you kept running over, find out where. Perhaps the base is too low, which means your number is too low as well. Or perhaps some of it was a one-off that the lumpy average already covers, in which case the base can stay.
The second test is harder to arrange but tells you more. Take a block of time off work and live the days you have planned.
Annual leave is the easiest way. Two weeks in a row, with no travel, spent doing what you said you would do after stopping, is a good first test. If your employer offers a sabbatical or no-pay leave, a month gives a much better picture, because the novelty wears off after the first week or two and you see what ordinary days feel like. Check your employer's policy and what it means for your benefits during the leave.
The rule for the trial is to live the plan as written, and to resist turning it into a holiday. So if your plan says pottery on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and a volunteering shift on Wednesday, do those. If it says you will finally write that book, sit down and write.
A trial run only helps if you record what really happened, not what you meant to do.
Keep it simple. Each day, note what you actually did with your time, roughly in hours. Before bed, give the day a score for how you felt, on a scale you choose. And keep tracking spending against the base.
The gap between plan and reality is the useful part. The volunteering shift might feel like a chore while the pottery mornings stretch into whole days. You could find yourself buying lunch out most days because the flat feels empty. By the third week some people feel restless, and others feel better than they have in years.
A trial has no pass mark. Whatever you find feeds back into the plan.
A spending base that proved too low should be raised, and your model from lesson 4.4 rerun. The date will move, and that is better than discovering the shortfall at 52. Parts of the time plan that did not work can be replaced and tested again. And if you found you missed work more than you expected, that is a real finding. Some people discover through a trial that they want barista FI rather than full FI, or that they would like to keep working longer at something they enjoy more.
A decision to keep working is not a failed trial. It is a decision made with evidence instead of assumptions.
Priya, from the earlier modules, uses made-up figures. Her base is S$44,000 a year, about S$3,667 a month at today's prices. She plans to live on that from January to June while still working, with commuting costs paid from a separate pot.
For the time plan, she books two weeks of annual leave in May and asks her manager about a further two weeks of no-pay leave straight after. Together they would give her a month of planned days. She will track three things: her spending each month against S$3,667, the hours each day spent on pottery, volunteering and freelance work, and a mood score from one to five each evening.
She writes down in advance what would count as a warning: spending over the base in three or more months, or a mood score that falls through the month. Writing it down first stops her from explaining away an uncomfortable result afterwards.
Before you begin the activity, check your leave balance and your employer's policy on longer leave, and look at a calendar for a period without major events, so the test reflects ordinary life.
Design a trial run with dates, the spending base you will live on and three things you will track.
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