Mark Your Calendar
While you are creating your summary, make a note of certain dates. You know the kind of thing I mean: car insurance renewal dates as well as MOT and service due dates; end dates for your utilities or mortgage deals – things like that.
Mark these dates in your calendar so that you can address the things which are linked to each date. Better still, mark your calendar two or three weeks before the due dates, with a note of when the renewal date actually is, so that you can be prepared ahead of time. For something like a remortgage which might take a while to organise, mark your calendar 2 to 3 months ahead of time.
While you're at it and you have your calendar to hand, pick a date for a full annual review. JL Collins, who wrote the superb book The Simple Path to Wealth, has his annual financial review on his wife's birthday. I bet she loves him for that!
Update Your Contact Details
When you were going through all your paperwork, physical or digital, you may have noticed that some details were incorrect. I've seen it happen countless times, that incorrect details lead to lost pensions and investments and more.
Take the time to check that your contact details are correct in every case, and where they are not, contact the provider to update your information. In particular make sure you have the correct email address registered.
If for no other reason, this is why it makes sense not to have your email address provided by your Internet provider. Very often you will lose that address if you subsequently change from BT to Sky to Virgin. There are plenty of free email providers like Gmail and outlook.com, and you can keep these email addresses indefinitely, even if you change your ISP provider.
One useful tip for Gmail users: you can add a plus sign and more text to the end of the first half of your Gmail address to create an infinite number of unique addresses. For example, if your address is basilbrush@gmail.com and you were signing up for a British Gas account, you could use the email address basilbrush+britishgas@gmail.com.
This makes it very easy to filter email into the right folder when it arrives, because each thing you sign up for has a unique version of your email address, and also if you start getting spammed to that address, you know who the culprit is.
Making sure that your providers have the right contact details is a really important part of being financially organised. Make a note of log-in details for each of the providers too, and add that to your summary.
Shop Around
All providers of insurance, utilities, banking and lots more besides rely on inertia on the part of their customers to make retaining those customers easy. This is the reason why banks compete for student accounts.
They know that if they can get their hooks into a student as a young adult, the odds are pretty good that they will still be banking with them 40 years later. As if more proof were needed, I was a Griffin Saver with Midland Bank in the 80s when I was nine years old, and I still bank with HSBC now!
My terrible example aside, we should definitely be shopping around more than we are. If everybody did it, the providers would have to sharpen up their game. Fortunately, it is now easier than ever to shop around for insurances, utilities, broadband and pretty much anything else you can think of.
Don’t be afraid to negotiate with your current providers too – sometimes that’s easier than switching. Shop around first and present the switch option you’ve found to your current provider. Maybe they’ll match it, maybe they won’t, but you don’t know if you don’t ask.
There is obviously lots of good stuff about getting deals on these things on the Money Saving Expert forums. My good buddy Damien Fahy and the team at Money to The Masses also have some good information on the subject.
When you save money on a regular bill, decide what to do with the money you’ve saved. You’ve been used to paying the higher amount, so you can now be intentional with the savings.
Will you spend it? If so, then do so intentionally, enjoying the smug satisfaction of having not been a slave to inertia. Will you save it? If so, then be intentional about where it should go. Even £10 a month extra going into your pension or ISA will make a difference.
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