You will review your first year against a checklist and set your plan for year two.
It is January, a year after Hui Min started work. Her first year has involved more paperwork than she expected: an offer sheet, three months of payslip checks, a benefits map, a budget, a loan schedule and an insurance brief. Some of it is finished. Some of it she started and forgot. She has no single place that tells her where she stands.
This project closes the year. You will check each part of your money in turn, compare what you saved with what you planned, write a short review, and set three goals for year two. Allow about 45 minutes. The figures are made-up examples, and nothing here recommends a product.
Produce three things. A 12-month checklist with every area marked and a date for its next step. A half-page written review of your first year. And three money goals for your second year, each with an amount and a date. Use your own documents from the course where you have them, and the sample documents where you do not.
Make a table with one row for each area of the course, in this order: offer, payslip, CPF, benefits, budget, parents, loan, insurance and investing. Give it three columns: status, what is left, and the date for the next step.
Mark each row done, in progress or not started. Be honest. A row marked done should mean the thing exists and is current, not that you once meant to do it.
Hui Min's table reads like this. Offer: done, the comparison sheet is saved. Payslip: in progress, she stopped her monthly check after month four, so she sets a date to restart in February. CPF: done, she checks her contributions arrived each quarter. Benefits: done, though she notes the map needs updating because the company changed insurer. Budget: done, and running on automatic transfers. Parents: done, S$400 a month, and her raise rule takes it to S$450 in April. Loan: done, S$260 a month plus S$1,000 from her AWS. Insurance: in progress, the brief is written but she has not yet had the follow-up meeting, so she books it for March. Investing: not started, by choice, until her buffer is complete.
Every row that is not done gets a date. "In progress" with no date tends to stay in progress for good.
Next, look at what you actually saved over the year against what your budget from lesson 4.4 planned. Pick the lines that matter most, usually the buffer, any extra loan payments, and the tax set-aside.
Hui Min planned S$400 a month into her buffer, S$4,800 for the year. She paused the transfer twice, once for a friend's wedding and once after a large dental bill, so the monthly transfers came to S$4,000. Then her AWS added S$1,560 under the bonus rule from lesson 7.2. Her buffer ended the year at S$5,560, which is S$760 more than her plan and S$360 above her target of S$5,200.
The difference matters less than the reasons. Write a note next to each gap. Hui Min's notes: two months paused, both for real reasons, and the AWS was not in the plan at all. The lesson she takes from it is that her plan should say what happens to bonuses, which her new bonus rule now does.
In half a page, answer four questions in plain sentences. What went better than expected? What went worse? What surprised you? And what would you tell yourself on the first day of work, if you could?
Hui Min writes that the automatic transfers worked better than she expected, and that her spending on food delivery crept up without her noticing until lesson 7.1, Lifestyle creep happens one reasonable upgrade at a time. She was surprised that her mother was relieved to agree a fixed amount. Her note to her first-day self is short: read the benefits guide in week one.
Finally, set three money goals for the next twelve months. Each needs an amount and a date, so that you will know at the end of year two whether you met it.
Hui Min's goals: move the S$360 above her buffer target, and from then on her S$520 monthly buffer transfer, into a separate investing pot from March, once she has compared accounts as in lesson 7.3. Pay S$1,000 extra into her study loan by 31 December. Save S$1,500 for a trip to Japan by October, as its own budget line rather than out of everyday spending.
Notice that none of them names a product. Choosing what to invest in is taught in Build and run an ETF portfolio.
A finished project is a table with all nine areas marked and every open item dated, a savings comparison with a reason beside each gap, a half-page review, and three goals that each have an amount and a date. Put the date at the top and keep it with your other course documents. In a year, the same table becomes the starting point for your second review.
Your raise rule from lesson 7.2 belongs on the same page, because it is the thing most likely to decide how year two turns out.
Complete the 12-month checklist, write a half-page review of your first year, and set three dated goals for year two.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).