We have all heard about Spring Cleaning and when most of us hear it we immediately think of the dreaded task of cleaning our homes. Just thinking about it can be overwhelming and frustrating. There are not many people I know that value and get a great deal of joy out of cleaning.
The type of Spring cleaning I am talking about here is cleaning up your finances and making room, creating additional cash flow that can be used to put towards your goals or even bring you more joy today, it all depends on how you want to use it. We are in an auto-pay and subscription world and taking a look at where your hard-earned money is going every month is something you should look at it, minimally, once a year, and Spring seems like a great time to do it.
Where’s it going?
My family just did this for ourselves and I will share with you some of the things we looked at where we were successful in reducing our expenses. First, we took a look at our monthly bills. Bills for phone, internet, cable, or alarm may be some of your monthly expenditures like they are for me. How many of these have increased over the years and you have not done anything about them other than paying them on time? Part of your Spring cleaning effort should be to contact these providers and negotiate a lower monthly fee than you are paying now. We reached out to these providers and many were willing to reduce our cost simply to keep us as a customer, they realize it will cost them more to acquire a new one than to keep us happy. It would be great if this happened automatically without you calling but it doesn’t, they rely on you simply continuing to pay. According to a CNBC article from January of 2023, there are bill negotiation services that can even assist you with this process. We were successful in reducing our monthly expenses, on our own, by several hundred dollars per month.
Subscriptions are a commonplace expense for most people, they are in my household. Are you still using your Netflix, Apple TV, Spotify, or Peloton monthly subscriptions, for example? This is the time to review all of your subscriptions and clean out those you are not using, receiving value or joy. I am sure if you look hard enough you will find a few. We looked and found one or two pesky subscriptions that our family was no longer using, but still paying for and we canceled on the spot, saving us money each month again. For those of you that know me, the Peloton was not one of them, that is one of my favorite and most used monthly subscriptions.
We would be happy to schedule a time to discuss how we can help you and your family understand how you can Spring clean your finances to lower your expenses. Feel free to schedule a 30 Minute Zoom Meeting for us to discuss this.
This article represents the opinion of Mitlin Financial Inc. It should not be construed as providing investment, legal and/or tax advice. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss. To determine what may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor.