Doing regular check-ups with your money is just as important as going to the doctor or dentist for regular check-ups as how we feel about our money affects our mind and physical health.
You may also be surprised that when you give your finances a spring clean, you could actually save some money and here’s a few different things that you can try:
It all starts by doing your monthly budget showing all of your income and expenditure and seeing what money you have left over as not everybody knows exactly how much they spend on bills each month. Once you’ve done that, here’s a few things that you can do to help clean your finances up:
If your income is less than your expenditure:
- The first thing to do is to check that your income is right, by checking that you’re receiving the right benefits.
- Also bear in mind that if you look at one month on it’s own, your financial situation may look worse than if you look at your annual costs and divide it by 12 to get the average month.
- Once you’ve looked at your income, we can go give some of your expenses a light dusting by looking at the cost of any debt you have. If you are paying interest on credit cards, loans, overdrafts then it could be cheaper to take out a Debt Consolidation Loan with us so that you’re not paying different companies the interest.
- The next step is to look at any contracts that you may have either for utilities, phone etc. as by shopping around you can sometimes pay less. Especially with the increase in gas and electricity, not all of the companies are increasing their costs with the same percentage increase so it is worth shopping around. Just remember to look at any cost of coming out of your contract such as your phone if you have one.
- Then have a look at some of your social bills such as money spent on birthdays or going out. If there are lots of birthdays over the springtime then by budgeting better and spreading the cost over the full year you may find that springtime might not be so difficult after all.
You will find other money-saving tips and advice on dealing with debt in our Wave Money Guide so download a copy.
You can also ask us for help with budgeting or speak to an independent debt advisor at a centre near you.
