Dated savings goals, so a season never catches you out again
Nobody is surprised by Ramadan; its date is known a year ahead. And still, plenty of budgets break in the month before it, and instalments get signed in August because of school, as if these seasons fell out of the sky unannounced. The difference between a household that passes through them calmly and one that borrows for them is that the first gave every season a figure and a date eleven months earlier.
What you'll have at the end
A list of your year's seasons with a figure for each, a monthly instalment toward every goal, and a place to keep it.
Step one: write out the whole year's seasons
One sheet, twelve months. Under each month, whatever falls in it that costs more than an ordinary month: Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha and the sacrifice, school with its uniforms, books and fees, summer and its travel, car insurance and registration renewal, a wedding anniversary, the children's birthdays, winter clothes. Write the big distant things too: Hajj, a replacement car, a son's wedding.
Step two: put last year's figure on each season
Don't estimate. Open what you logged, or last year's statements, and see what last Ramadan cost above an ordinary month, and what school cost. If you weren't logging, this is the year you start, and a rough figure beats nothing. A Dubai household with two children spends about 25,000 AED on school in September, and Ramadan plus Eid runs about 6,000 over the usual. Your own figure is the one that matters.
Step three: divide over the months left
A season costing 25,000 with ten months to go needs 2,500 a month. Add up the instalments for every season; that total comes out of the monthly savings share once stage two of the emergency fund is complete. If the total is more than you can manage, the seasons get ranked: what can't be postponed first, school and Eid, and what can, travel and the anniversary, gets shrunk or dropped this year by a decision made in advance, which is cheaper than a disappointment on the day.
Step four: pick a place for each goal by how far off it is
Near goals, under a year, sit in cash in the "don't touch" account or in a savings circle whose turn you choose to land a month before the season; a circle that pays you in July solves September. Far goals, over a year, Hajj, the son's wedding, the car, sit in gold, because cash that waits three years loses a quarter of itself and nobody feels it. One place per goal, never mixed: whoever keeps school and summer in one account travels on the book money.
Step five: open next year's on the day this year's closes
On the day school expenses end, write the real figure next to your estimate, and start next year's instalment from the following month. The season that closes and gets forgotten until it returns is the one that surprises you. The season whose saving starts the day after it ends surprises nobody.
Where most people trip
In the month two seasons land together, Ramadan and the children's exams, say, or Eid al-Adha and the start of school. Money goes from one goal to the other and never gets put back. The fix is in step one: the sheet shows you the collision ten months ahead, so you raise the instalment for those two months now.
Tonight's exercise
The twelve-month sheet, complete. A figure for every season. The total of the monthly instalments. Then pick the nearest season and write its instalment and its completion date large.
Questions I get asked
My salary barely covers the month, how do I save for seasons?
The season comes whether you saved or not; the difference is that it comes as an instalment afterwards. Start with the biggest season alone, usually school, even at half its instalment.
Save for the Eid sacrifice or join a sacrifice circle?
Whichever makes you pay. A circle binds you; individual saving needs a mechanism from the last lesson.
Hajj is ten years away, do I start now?
Now. Gold worth 1,000 AED a month for ten years gets you there, and waiting until "things ease" gets nobody there.
Log each season as a dated savings goal in Fawatery and it works out the monthly instalment and tells you if you're behind before the date arrives
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Based on: "The traditional road to wealth, wealth books summary".
That's the end of the saving module: you have an emergency fund, a mechanism that fills it, and dated goals. Module five is about the silent enemy that eats all of it if it stays as cash: inflation.