You will be able to set the dates for every recurring money task in a freelance year.
Most late fees, missed deadlines and money surprises in a freelance year have one thing in common: the date was knowable months in advance. The tax filing deadline comes at roughly the same time every year. Your insurance renews on the same day. Your business registration has a renewal date printed on it. None of these is a secret, and yet each catches people out, because nobody puts them in one place.
This lesson builds that place: a calendar of every recurring money task in your year.
Start with the dates set by other people.
The income tax filing deadline is set by IRAS. Look up the current deadline on the IRAS website, put it in your calendar, and put your own target a few weeks before it, so a busy month does not push you past it. Lesson 4.4 showed that most of the work is done in your records before you file.
Your notice of assessment and your MediSave notice arrive after you file, at times that vary. You cannot know the exact date, but you can see when they came last year, from your emails or your myTax Portal and CPF accounts. Put a check date a few weeks after those, as lesson 2.3 suggested, so you are looking for the notices rather than waiting for them.
Insurance renewals come next. Every policy you hold has a renewal or premium date. Put each one in, with the policy name, and a note to check whether the cover still fits your cover map from lesson 6.4.
If you are registered with ACRA, add the renewal date for your business registration, which is on your registration details in BizFile+. If you have a company, add its filing dates for ACRA and IRAS, which your company secretary or accountant can confirm. Other licences, such as a vocational licence for driving, have their own renewal dates too.
Then add the dates you set for yourself.
Four quarterly reviews, using the checklist from lesson 8.1. Many freelancers pick a date shortly after each quarter ends, such as the second week of January, April, July and October, so the quarter's bank statements are available. Pick dates you can actually keep.
One of those four becomes your annual review. It is longer, and it covers the things you only reset once a year: your base pay, your floor rate and rate sheet from module 7, your structure decision from lesson 5.4, your voluntary CPF decision from lesson 3.4 and your cover map. Mei holds hers in December, after her busiest season, when she knows how the year went.
Add your voluntary CPF contribution month, if you chose one in lesson 3.4, ideally matched to a review. Add the monthly base pay transfer date, mostly as a reminder to check it ran, and any GIRO dates for tax or MediSave instalments, so you know when the pot will be drawn on.
A date in a calendar is easy to miss on the day. Set a reminder one week before each one.
A week is enough time to act. You can gather the documents for your tax return, compare insurance options before a renewal, or move money into the pot before a GIRO deduction. A reminder on the day itself usually arrives too late to do anything but panic.
For the larger tasks, such as filing your tax return or the annual review, a second reminder a month ahead also helps.
Here is part of Mei's calendar, as an example of what a finished one looks like. Her dates are illustrative, and yours will differ.
Second week of January, April, July and October: quarterly reviews, with December's year-end review in place of a fourth regular one. The month of the IRAS filing deadline: tax return filed, with her own target three weeks before it. A few weeks after her notices arrived last year: check for her notice of assessment and MediSave notice. Her shield plan renewal month, when she takes one up: renewal check. The 25th of each month: base pay transfer check. December: voluntary CPF contribution after the year-end review. Her business registration renewal date, now that she has registered.
Each has a reminder a week before. The whole thing took her about forty minutes to set up, and from then on her calendar reminded her instead of a late fee doing it.
Use whatever calendar you check every day, whether on your phone or your computer. A separate calendar for money dates, shown in its own colour, makes them easy to spot without cluttering everything else. What matters is that the reminders reach you.
Open the calendar you use most, and begin with the dates set by other people, since those are the ones that cost money to miss.
Create a calendar with every money date for the next twelve months and a one-week reminder for each.
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