You will assemble the course into one income plan and one estate file your family can find and use.
A plan spread across nine spreadsheets, three drawers and one person's memory is only a plan for that person. If Jasmine had a stroke tomorrow, Megan would need to find her withdrawal rules, her asset map, her will and her LPA, and know which bank to call first. This project pulls everything from the course into two things: one workbook that holds the income plan, and one estate file that holds the documents and tells your family where everything is.
Allow about seventy-five minutes, plus the time it takes to collect documents you don't have to hand. Jasmine's version, with made-up figures, is the worked example.
Build two deliverables.
The first is a retirement income workbook. It brings together your spending estimate from lesson 1.4, your floor sheet from lesson 2.4, your drawdown map from lesson 3.4, your one-page rules from lesson 4.4, your scenario results from lesson 5.4 and your housing and care plan from lesson 6.4. Someone opening it should be able to see, in five minutes, what you spend, what pays for it each year, what you do in a bad year and how long the money lasts.
The second is an estate file, kept in one place your family can find, physical, digital or both. It holds your asset map from lesson 7.5, every legal document or a note of where it is kept, and a one-page letter to your family.
Put each sheet from the course into one file, one tab each, in the order of the course. Add a front tab, a summary of no more than a page, that reads like this for Jasmine:
Stops full-time work at 60, part-time consulting to 62. Spending about S$40,000 a year at today's prices, S$26,000 essential. CPF LIFE from 65 on a level plan, invented payout S$1,600 a month, with the rising plan still under review until 64. Savings about S$1,030,000 at 60 in this example: two years of withdrawals in cash, five in the middle bucket, the rest in growth. SRS drawn from 63 to 70. Guardrails tied to the expected rate for each age; cuts fall on flexible spending only. Central case reaches 95. Weakest scenario, the early crash, lasts to 95 with a 20% flexible cut and room rental from 63. With care costs from 85, right-sizing at 75 and a S$50,000 gift to Megan at 61, she reaches 95 with about S$289,000.
Link the summary to the tabs rather than retyping numbers, so it updates when they do.
Then add the housing and care plan and the asset map. The housing and care plan goes into the workbook, because its costs feed the drawdown map. The asset map goes into both: a copy in the workbook, and a printed, dated copy in the estate file.
Check that the two agree. If your asset map shows a flat you plan to sell at 75, your drawdown map should show the proceeds in that year.
In the estate file, make a short table with one row per document: your will, your LPA, any Advance Medical Directive, your Advance Care Planning record, your CPF nomination, each insurance nomination, and any trust deed. For each, record the date it was made, where the original is kept, who holds a copy, and the date you will next review it.
Jasmine's table: her new will, made with her lawyer, original held at the law firm and its location recorded with the Registry of Wills, copy with Megan; her LPA, registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, copies with Megan and Leong; her Advance Care Planning record, copy with Megan and her polyclinic; her CPF nomination, made online, recorded on her CPF dashboard; and her two insurance nominations, recorded by each insurer. Every row has a review date of next January.
Then add the events that trigger an earlier review. For Jasmine the most important one is marriage. If she marries Leong, the marriage would revoke her will unless it was made in contemplation of that marriage, and would revoke her CPF nomination. Divorce, the death of anyone named in a document, the birth of a grandchild and a large change in her savings are on the list too.
The letter is for the person most likely to deal with your affairs. It isn't a legal document. It is a map to the legal documents and to the practical things no document covers.
Jasmine's letter to Megan covers, in plain sentences: where the workbook and estate file are; who to call first, her lawyer and then her bank; which assets pass outside the will and how to claim them; where her withdrawal rules are, in case Megan ever acts under the LPA; her digital accounts and where the password manager's emergency access is set up; the care she would want, and that her Advance Care Planning record says more; and what she would like done for her mother and for Leong.
It ends with a line telling Megan she doesn't have to get everything right, and that the file is there so she won't have to guess.
Show the letter to the person who will use it and ask what is unclear. Megan asked two questions Jasmine hadn't thought of: who has the spare key to the flat, and whether Leong knows about the file. Both answers went into the letter.
Store the estate file somewhere your family can reach without you, and tell them where. Set a yearly review date in your calendar, the same day as your January drawdown review, so the plan and the documents are updated together.
A finished version is one workbook with a one-page summary at the front and a tab for every module, and one estate file with a dated asset map, a table of every legal document with its location and review date, and a one-page family letter. Someone you trust has read the letter, and the next review date is in your calendar.
Assemble yours now, then put the letter in front of the person most likely to need it.
Assemble the plan and estate file, show the one-page letter to the person most likely to use it, and set a yearly review date.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).