Near the end of every year I always take an entire day to take a high-level look at my expenses and try to identify areas where I can reduce expenses and eliminate waste. I'm not making new year's resolutions like stop eating out so much but am more identifying monthly charges that just aren't necessary or switching insurance providers - stuff like that. I have usually been able to identify more than $1,000 in savings in this one day each year making it a very well-paid day. That $1,000 in savings often tends to also be $1,000 in savings every year going forward rather than a one-time deal as well. These wasteful expenses will be different for different people but here are a few items I identified two years ago as examples:
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Canceled a checking account I no longer used that had a $50 a year overdraft protection fee.
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I had bought a new phone w/ a 0% loan recently and they incorrectly signed me up for phone insurance. Canceled it for $104 a year savings.
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My wife has a disease that made life insurance very very expensive. Due to a new professional designation (CPA) and various professional memberships that my work pays for I was eligible to participate in a new life insurance plan and was to get her life insurance that had 3x the coverage at 1/5th the cost and they refund 40% of the premiums traditionally. For full disclosure, the rates are graduated with age and she will pay more in premiums in the future but the savings were still HUGE. Savings of $680 for the year.
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Reviewed my car insurance and canceled the towing part for a $20 a year savings as I'm always gifted a AAA membership from relatives.
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A long time ago I switched all expenses to be ran through credit cards for the rewards. There were two monthly bill that were coming straight out of the checking account so switching those to a 1.5% card saved $27 a year. On a side note, we get $900-1000 a year in credit card rewards by running all expenses through 6 credit cards so that's in itself can be huge.
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I had a bad habit of taking one 5 hour energy every day despite really enjoying black coffee. Stopped taking 5 hour energy and switched to more drip coffee for a $650 a year savings.
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I nearly switched car and home insurance that year as I didn't think $18 a month was worth the hassle and then got hit with huge home insurance premium increases that would have raised it to $40 a month savings so should have done that and wish I would have.
Total that year was $1,531 going forward.
TLDR: You can probably save a good deal of money just by spending a little bit of time identifying and eliminating wasteful expenses.
Submitted November 25, 2019 at 09:09PM by Sarudin https://ift.tt/2Dhsyz8
