The planning year
Twelve months, five times at the table.
This is the rhythm of the Annual Income-and-Expense Plan. The months are counted from your opening sitting, not from a public calendar, because a tutor’s year and a rubber trader’s year do not start on the same morning.
-
Opening
We sort the past twelve months and draft the cash map within ten days: income you can reasonably expect, standing costs, the household draw, and two set-asides. You read the draft at home before you decide to continue. The opening review fee is credited if you continue within thirty days.
-
First quarter
You live with the map. At the first quarterly sitting we expect the draw to feel slightly tight. That is useful information. We change it if the tightness is the plan’s mistake, and we leave it if the tightness is the point.
-
Middle of the year
School terms, a festival, or a family obligation often land here regardless of your trade. The sitting puts that spending next to the income month that was supposed to carry it. If the carrying month failed, the later draw changes in the note you take home.
-
The thin stretch
If your work has a known quiet season, this sitting checks whether the quiet-month jar was actually filled. Spending it now is allowed. Pretending the season did not come is how people borrow for rice with a jar still closed at home.
-
Closing
The last sitting reads the whole year against the original map. We name what held and what was fiction. If you want another year, the next map starts from this evidence. If you stop, you keep the notes.
Between the sittings
Between sittings you keep the sheet, the envelopes, or the passbook in whatever form you will still touch on a tired evening. At the next sitting, bring that and one surprise. A surprise is a bill, a gift, or a lump of income the map left unnamed. The hour is more honest when you bring it.
Visits outside the ledger room, within Narathiwat, can be arranged for the quarterly dates. Say so when you request the year, because travel changes the quote. The address for the room itself remains Tambon Tan Yong Mat, Amphoe Ra-ngae, Narathiwat 96130.
Read what the annual plan includes Request an opening sitting