subject: Five Financial Oversights that Cost You Money [print this page] Five Financial Oversights that Cost You Money
If you think you have your finances pretty much in hand, that's great. But once you get the basics down, there may be some fine-tuning that can help you save even more. Here are five financial oversights that might be costing you needless money every month.Check your bank statements, and while you're at it, your credit card statements, too. Look these over every month-at least. Review them every two weeks, if you tend to have a lot of money moving in and out of your accounts. Banks make mistakes, and so do credit card companies.Always pay yourself every month. It's a good idea to do this automatically so you have no choice about saving. Even if it's the smallest amount of money--$20, $30 or even less-setting some money aside gets you in the habit of saving. When you begin to make more money, you can set aside more. Shoot for 10% of your gross, 1% at a time.Create some kind of home-based system to track all your accounts. Consider a file where you keep all your financial statements-RRSPs, banking statements, credit cards, lines of credit, mortgages, other investments, and savings. File by type-savings, credit lines, and ongoing bills. For monthly bills, like utilities, phones, rentals, number it by the day. It can be as simple as writing the day the bill is due (say the 15th) in large print in the upper left or right hand corner of the bill, and then filing all your bills by due day. Now you'll be able to quickly scan through your bills and know when every payment is due-and never be late again.If you're electronically minded, you can have an electronic notice sent to you-to the minute-reminding you to pay that upcoming bill. But, even though your billing may come electronically, consider printing out at least one copy of a bill to put into a paper-based system. Research shows that when you physically handle material, you're more likely to remember it.Now that you're saving so much money every month, consider getting a chequing account with a small floating balance. Often it's about a $1000 minimum. These kinds of accounts carry zero cost for most transactions if you maintain the minimum balance. Instead of thinking about the float as money you cannot access, think about it as making you money-chequing accounts can cost $15 and more each month. So if you're not paying that $15/month, it means your float is making you at least $180/year return on your investment. That's an astounding 18 percent annual return (when's the last time your RRSPs did that?)!Keep reviewing how and where you spend your money until every dollar you spend is accounted for, and working for you.
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