What I’d like to Improve in my Personal Finance Management
No Credit Needed asks What is one area of your personal finance management you would like to improve?
While I’ve come a long way to the slumlord of Personal Finance that I used to be when I was married, obviously no one is perfect. With that said I can honestly say that there is not much I’d change about the way I handle my money, and the few vices that I do still have will (not “can”) be changed over time.
1. Impulse Buys. I still get an impulse buy urge now and then. It’s never anything major, but once in a while I’ll be browsing etsy.com or something and buy something I’ve fallen in love with that I didn’t need. This always comes with a pile of regret. The only way to really fix this is to sit on any purchase that I really want for a week or so and then decide whether it’s something I really want to waste my money on. After all, material possessions do not make up who I am.
2. Paying in advance. Mainly this means paying for my whole 6 month policy of car insurance instead of the monthly fee. Most insurance companies give you a discount for doing such, and I haven’t quite gotten this far in my financial turn-around yet. The same goes for web hosting, you can get some major discounts by paying a year or two in advance. The easiest way for me to do this is through ING because they allow me to set up as many “accounts” under my account as I want in order to manage funds. I already have one for my Christmas Fund, I could easily make two more for my car insurance fund and my web hosting fund if I wanted. That way certain amounts can be taken out every month and I can set it and forget it until the time comes to pay the bill.
My sweetheart and I figured out that just paying the auto insurance and web hosting in advance would save me about $500 a year, which I can just put into savings by still paying myself every month as if I am still paying these bills as is.
I did recently email my host and ask for a promo to pay in advance and they did offer me a pretty good deal of $118 for 2 years, which is a lot cheaper than what I’m paying now.
3. Finish reducing all of my bills. I’m so close to getting down to my most minimal amount of bills each month, but I wanted to add this anyway because it is important to me.
The only one right now that I can think of that I need to work on reducing is the phone bill. If I switch over to VOIP service then that’ll cut my phone costs considerably because I’ll have the “Comcast Triple Play.”
4. Finding better deals. A lot of times I am too impatient to find better deals on things, so I will take one that I think looks good. This isn’t really a flaw, but I’m sure I could be even more frugal about the way I get what I need. Obviously I already do things like buy used books instead of new. But I don’t use things like Goodwill or Consignment shops or the like enough.
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One Response to “What I’d like to Improve in my Personal Finance Management”
March 12th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Congrats on your achievements so far! Paying some bill in advance (like hosting) is a great idea and can often bring 20-30% off what you would pay otherwise and it’s easy to do if you have a bit of spare money. Make sure you keep on analyzing all your bills and find ways you can save. The more I research and look around, I keep on getting surprise by things I hadn’t thought of. Take time to review your insurance policies, it’s easy to do multiple quote for car insurance online and it help me save you hundreds last year.
Keep up the great work.