The weekly look

The daily ten seconds keeps you in touch with the number. The weekly look is where anything gets done about it. It takes about twenty minutes, at the same time each week.

Choose a time that reliably exists, such as Sunday after breakfast or Thursday evening after the washing-up. Attach it to something that already happens, as with the daily look. Same time, same chair.

Here's what goes into it.

First, the post. Under the rule in the next chapter, every envelope is opened the day it arrives, so there shouldn't be anything unopened. But opening a thing and dealing with it aren't the same. Anything that needed action went into the tray. Now you deal with the tray. Pay what needs paying and ring whoever needs ringing. File or recycle what's done.

Second, the accounts. Open each account you have, including the current account, savings and any credit cards. Look down the week's transactions. You're checking three things. Do I recognise everything? Is there anything regular that I'd forgotten about or no longer want? Is anything missing that should have arrived?

Third, three numbers, written down. This is the centre of the weekly look. On a sheet of paper or in a notebook, write the date and then three figures. The first is what's in the current account now. The second is what's still due to go out before the next payday, which means the rent or mortgage, the direct debits and any bills from the tray. The third is the first minus the second. That's what you really have to live on until payday. It's the number that the rough idea was always pretending to be.

I'm asking you to write it down because of Harkin's finding in chapter 5. Monitoring had a bigger effect when the information was physically recorded. A figure you've written is harder to fudge than one you've glanced at. After a couple of months the notebook also shows you something no single look can, which is the pattern. You'll see which weeks are tight, and whether things are drifting up or down.

Fourth, one thing. Each week, do one small thing that improves matters. It might be cancelling a subscription you spotted, or ringing about a renewal that's due next month. You could move twenty pounds into savings, or set up a direct debit for something you keep paying late. Keep it to one thing. The weekly look should stay light enough that you never dread it.

Then stop. Twenty minutes is the limit. If it takes much longer than that, something needs a session of its own. Give it one, and don't let it swell the weekly look into an evening you'll start avoiding.

If you share finances, do the weekly look together when you can, or at least tell each other the three numbers. It needn't be a summit. It can be twenty minutes with a cup of tea, and the more routine it is, the less heat there'll be in it. Couples who never discuss money tend to discuss it only when something has gone wrong, and that's a poor time for it.

A plan of the "when this, then that" kind helps the weekly look survive. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 tests of such plans and found that they made people a good deal more likely to follow through. "When I've finished breakfast on Sunday, then I'll sit at the table with the tray, the phone and the notebook." If you miss a week, do it the day you notice. Missing one week isn't a relapse. It would take three missed weeks for the drawer to start filling up again.