The old sheet, first
A monthly plan review starts with the sheet that was initialed last time. If it stayed in a drawer and never came back, we still begin with the copy in the practice file. Reading it aloud is the whole of the opening. Targets are not raised, and new schemes are not introduced, until last month has been heard.
Households tell us this feels stern. It is stern. A new savings figure written on top of an unread month is how notebooks become decorative.
Notes from the house
Next we take whatever you brought: a payday scrap, a stall tally, a passbook page, a list of supplier names. We are matching, not auditing a company. A missing receipt is described in a sentence. An amount you do not wish to show is left off the sheet; we mark the line as withheld rather than inventing a tidy total.
Ringgit and baht stay on separate lines when both were used. Adding them into one heroic number has never helped a Monday morning.
Dates, then pouches
The coming month is written as dates: wage day, rent, school, a known journey, a supplier who is paid on Fridays. Only then do the pouches get their amounts. Savings is a transfer with a weekday. The festival jar is either left shut or reduced in writing. The bill pouch is boring on purpose.
We do not turn over gossip, a neighbour’s debt, or a quarrel that is not about this purse. The hour is short. Initials close it. You take the new sheet home, and the file copy waits for the next time you sit down.
If a line here matches the way money moves in your house, the next step is a sitting, not another page. Write to the practice or see how the sittings differ.