Write Your First Money Plan
Everything in this course was building towards one thing: being able to look at a real person’s money and know what to do first, second and third.
Submit your capstone →The assignment
Write a 500 to 700 word money plan for a real or realistic person: yourself on a first salary, a family member, or a household you invent with care. Use real Indian prices, rates and rules. Apply at least three tools from this course, and connect the plan to one news story from the last three months that changes it.
What “three tools” actually means
A tool is one of the named ideas from this course: the 50-30-20 budget, the emergency fund, opportunity cost, deposit insurance limits, compounding and the rule of 72, real versus nominal returns, the return-risk-access trade-off, asset allocation, rupee cost averaging, the one-third EMI rule, credit scores, term and health insurance, or new-regime tax slabs. Using a tool means applying it to your person’s actual numbers, not just naming it. Mentioning “compounding” once has not used the tool. Showing how starting a ₹2,000 SIP five years earlier changes the outcome has.
Suggested structure
1. Open with the person: age, city, take-home income and their two or three most important goals, in two or three sentences.
2. Build the plan: budget, emergency fund, insurance, and where savings go for each goal, using your tools with real numbers.
3. Bring in real data: at least two specific, sourced figures, such as a current FD rate, the repo rate, CPI inflation or a tax slab.
4. Connect to the news: one recent story from this site or a newspaper, and exactly how it changes one part of the plan.
How this gets graded
| Criterion | Weak (1–2) | Solid (3) | Strong (4–5) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Numbers and accuracy | Vague amounts, or calculations that do not add up | Most figures realistic and correct | Every figure realistic, sourced where needed, and internally consistent |
| Use of tools | Zero or one tool from the course | Two tools used correctly | Three or more tools, applied to the person’s real numbers and to each other |
| Priorities | Investing before basics like an emergency fund or insurance | Sensible order with small gaps | Clear order: protect, then borrow carefully, then build |
| News connection | No link to current events | A relevant story, loosely connected | A specific recent story, with its exact effect on the plan explained |
| Clarity and voice | Reads like a list of tips or generated filler | Clear but generic | Concrete, honest about trade-offs, written for a real person |
A plan scoring 18 or more out of 25, with no criterion below 3, is eligible for the publication track.
What happens next
Whether or not your plan is published, finishing it means you have done, once and on your own, exactly what this course was built to teach: taken a real person’s money and decided what it should do, with reasons and real numbers.