It's Your Money

With the constant increase in the cost of living and the lack of pay increases, it’s just getting tighter and tighter on the household budget. Saying that, it seems looking for a better deal on home loans, health insurance, car insurance, mobile phones and even pay TV seems to go into the too hard basket or we are just brand loyal and don’t want to switch? Let me tell you about brand loyalty - the loyalty only swings one way and if you think these companies care about you, then you deserve to be gouged. If these brands really cared about you, they would give you a good deal without you asking for it. Here are some of my prime and personal example of finding a better deal.

The Bank -  I was with the same bank for over twenty years, I had all my accounts, including my mortgage and credit card with them. After doing some research I made the hard choice to swap banks and lose the brand loyalty mindset. With my new bank I was getting an extra 1% on my interest rate, which was worth around $100 per month, ($1,200 PA).  I was paying $5 a month per account, $180 a year in bank fees just to have the privilege of banking with them. With my new bank there were no monthly bank fees.

Plastic Money – I decided to bundle my credit card with the new mortgage and I saved $345 on the annual renewal fee. As you can see, by me swapping banks my annual saving was around $1,725, not bad, and on a side note, did my previous bank call to see why I was changing banks or try to win me back? Of course not. 

The Savings Bug- Looking at what I saved by switching banks, I got the savings bug and started looking at other areas in my household budget where I could save money. I had all my insurance policies clear in my cross hairs.

Insurance - Like most people when the insurance renewal came, I just paid it until one day I decided to go to the company’s website and do a requote, and guess what? I got a cheaper price.  How do you justify that same insurance company, same policy but cheaper price, other than making me royally mad? I started to shop around and found a similar car insurance policy cheaper by $500 per year. I kept going and found better deals on pet insurance and a few other polices as well.

Telco’s - No savings are too small, by bundling my pay TV and broadband and some pressure I put on my Telco provider, I made a saving of $20 a month, ($240 annually). Making a phone call to my mobile phone provider and asking for a better deal found me getting a better phone plan with a higher GB allowance and $10 cheaper per month - multiply that by two and it comes to another $240 in annual savings.

It’s your Money!! - You work too hard and you have earned every dollar, so why allow companies who are not loyal to you to keep your hard-earned cash? As you can see, in one year I found close to $3,000 savings in my household budget. It’s my money, and every year now I go through this exercise. I have a spreadsheet that is separated by monthly, quarterly and annual bills/payments, this gets looked at every year.  The following year after reviewing my spreadsheet I found another $600 savings, not has big as the first savings but still something.

I understand it can be time consuming and cumbersome to look at switching banks and insurers. I’m not going to lie, there is some work involved in swapping providers, and in particular with moving banks, however a good provider will help you through the process. My suggestion is take one bill at a time and see if you can find something better.

There is so much competition out there, all competing for your business. Do your research and look at the small print before agreeing to anything.

I am not a financial advisor or claim to be one, I just took the time to look for a better deal. Remember, “It’s Your Money”.

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