Time for an audit...
of your financial life.
Quick announcement!
July 18 @ 4 pm at Caveat on the LES.
Get $10 off with code LOL10
Get $3 off with code LOL3 (You can watch it on demand until July 25)
CASTING a brave New Yorker willing to talk about paying off debt while trying to life a fun life! Comment, DM, or email me if that’s you!
I looked at my business checking account in dismay. An account that used to be flushed with cash slowly kept dwindling down. Of course this happened in tandem with seemingly every single biennial expense I have being auto-charged to my credit card.
The first course of action: reduce my salary to stanch the bleed.
The second: an audit of my professional expenses and our personal household expenses.
You should run a financial audit at least once a year.
This is a practice you should do at least annually, if not semi-annually.
The simplest way is to download several months worth of monthly bank and credit card statements. I’d suggest at least three, but keep in mind that you might have annual subscriptions or payments that are worth evaluating too.
Take the time to run down each statement and look for subscriptions, fees, or services that you don’t regularly use. Hello streaming services! Do you really need four or five of those at once or can you rotate which ones you’re using? Write down the service and the cost. Make note if you’d keep the service at a lower rate.
You should also write down your annual subscriptions/bills, especially insurance, and determine if it’s possible to negotiate on lowering costs.
Then set aside one hour in the next week to start unsubscribing or downgraded the services you no longer use or no longer find valuable.
You might also be pleasantly surprised that some companies will offer a cheaper rate for a period of time in order to keep you. Just don’t let a representative guilt trip you into staying! Only accept this offer if it was one of the services you previously marked as one you’d keep at a cheaper price.
Evaluate your benefits
This process doesn’t all have to be about slashing.
You should do a deep dive on all benefits available to you through work, credit cards, and memberships. Are you maximizing everything you possibly can — without having to spend a bunch of additional money?
For instance, I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card (yes, still!) and it has a $150 use-it-or-lose-it dining credit every six months to be used at specific restaurants. My husband and I have decided to turn it into a date night, but that does mean paying a babysitter. We’re still spending money to use the money — but we have used it before on taking our daughter out to eat.
Oh, and don’t forget about AAA memberships! If you’re a AAA member, then you need to always check if there’s a discount or benefit you could be using. I’ll be going to my local branch free passport photos later this year.
Save your savings
Now, here’s the kicker! You should be saving your savings. That means all the money you just freed up by canceling subscriptions should be put into savings (or put towards another financial goal like debt payoff). If it’s money you were living without before, it’s quite possible you could put it towards your financial goals instead of letting it linger in your checking to be spent some other way.
And you know those savings needs to be in a high-yield savings account!
Just be sure to understand if your HYSA is at a bank or a Fintech company that isn’t technically a bank. Personally, I recommend you go with the FDIC-insured bank.
Read more about the difference here at Alicia Adamczyk’s Money Moves.
Yup, I’m reminding you again!
FUNNY MONEY: A comedy show about money
Part Jokes. Part actionable financial advice.
It’s summertime in the city! That means happy hours, concerts, community events, pop-ups, and weddings happening everywhere except here. But can you afford to have fun when with student loans, rent, and overdue credit card bills?!
Of course you can! We’re going to prove you can live life and pay off your debt. We’re not joking about that part.
Funny Money combines standup, storytelling, and one brave New Yorker asking our panel for help getting their financial life together.
Featuring: Melissa Jean-Baptiste, creator of Millennial in Debt, Alyce Chan, stand-up comedian, one brave New Yorker as a special guest and hosted by ME (Erin Lowry)!
Get $5 off with code HAHA5
Get $3 off with code LOL3 (You can watch it on demand until July 25)