How happy are you with your finances? Do you feel you’re getting the most out of your income? With winter on the way and more time spent indoors, take a bit of time to review your Financial Warrant of Fitness.
Credit and debit cards and insurances can often represent the biggest financial outlays on top of general living expenses.
Credit and debit cards generally get a vigorous work-out over Christmas, and come the New Year we have to face the music and begin paying them off. Some of these have lower interest rates than others so it doesn’t hurt to have a look around to ensure you are getting the best deal when you have a bit of extra downtime over the hols. Sometimes banks offer deals where you can transfer your credit card balance to a rival bank for a far lower than average interest rate for a fixed period that are worth considering if you feel your credit card balances are getting out of control. So if you are worried about your cards, get online and shop around.
Insurances can be another big financial commitment and partly for this reason, industry professionals encourage clients to have an annual review. One of the big reasons for this is new personal and business policies are regularly coming on to the market that, depending on your circumstances, can offer wider cover for less cost than older policies.
Another reason is more people than you might think don’t realise the extent of the different policy covers they pay for and may not realise what they are entitled to claim for. This is where the web can really come into its own in terms of shopping around for car, home and contents insurance prices and so can a broker for business and life insurances.
A great way to find out exactly where your money is going is to buy a small notebook that you can carry with you wherever you go and keep a record of every cent you spend for 3-4 weeks. At the end of that time, tally your food costs etc to find out just what you spend the largest amounts of money on. Then you can have a realistic crack at creating a budget that will work for you.
Christmas is also a great time to check out new resources online to help you make your dollar go further. Both NZ Family Budgeting Service and Sorted offer free, online tools and budget guides that can help you think about what you need to do to gain better control over your money.
Tony - 11 years ago
Just a clarification regarding debit cards, they can not add to ones debt, as you can only spend the available balance. Admittedly spending your saving will come back to bite you when you have no cash to pay other bills.
As for the lure of cheap interest to change your credit card to another bank – beware of this one. While the transfer balance is charged at a very cheap rate it is only worth while doing if you do not use the card until your original balance is paid off. Any purchases are charged at the going rate, and payments come off the oldest debt (the cheap interest rate), first. So you could end up in just as bad a situation, though the cheaper rate to begin with will ultimately reduce your repayments