Five Things To Keep Your Finances On Track

We’re already two months into 2022 and I have no idea how that happened. I like to do check-ins quite often with my money and savings to ensure things are going the right way and nothing unexpected has cropped up. And this is so important to keep your finances on track.

If you didn’t sort out your finances at the start of the year it’s not too late to start now. And you don’t have to spend hours cultivating new financial plans or going through all of your spending if you don’t want to. Here are plenty of small steps you can take to help achieve your end goals. Here are some of my favourite tips to keep your finances on track.

Keep your ISAs on track

I’ve spoken a lot about ISAs in the past as I think they’re a great tool for saving as you can currently put in up to £20,000 each tax year without paying tax on any earnings. If you don’t yet have an ISA open do it now as you can only open one each tax year. There are plenty of types depending on what you want it for:

• Lifetime ISA if you’re saving for your first home or retirement (there’s a sweet 20% government bonus)
• Stocks and Shares ISA if you’re saving is longer term and you’re happy with a bit of risk
• Cash ISA for a bit of interest with no risk

If you already have an ISA then use up as much allowance as you can to make the most of the interest you’ll get. The end of the tax year (April 5th) is fast approaching.

Keep your finances on track by browsing incognito

On pretty much every website you go onto you’ll have to accept cookies. And this is a company’s way of tracking your journey online including the products and things you’re looking at. This can be for advertising purposes, but it can end up adjusting prices on things like flights and hotels. If a website sees you heading back to look at the same thing over and over again they know you’re interested. So they may increase the price of a particular flight for example to either encourage you to buy then and there as you worry it will go up again. Or just to make extra money when you do come to book.

Before you buy anything like a hotel, train fare, flight, etc where prices do naturally change, switch your browser to incognito mode. This means your browsing history will be deleted when you close your browser. If you’re not sure how to do this go to where you’d open a new window or tab and you should find it.

Let an app help you with saving

If you want to keep your finances on track but you’re no good at saving then let an app like Plum or Chip help you. The apps work by linking your bank accounts and automating savings when it knows you can afford it. The deposits are taken little but often so most of the time you won’t notice it and the pennies will soon add up.

There are options to get interest on your savings or invest it depending on what you’re saving for. But if you struggle to save much yourself then let an app help. It will get you into good habits as early as possible.

Keep your finances on track by researching renewal prices ahead of time

Research by MoneySupermarket shows that you can save money if you search for insurance 15 to 29 days before your renewal date. This means the average motorist will pay 17% less for car insurance if they search more than a week before their policy ends than if they renew on the last day.

You can save a lot of money by shopping around for a car, home, pet, life, and other types of insurance. And it’s usually cheaper than just automatically renewing as companies hope you won’t be bothered to shop around. Set up a calendar reminder 3-4 weeks before your policy expires to search around.

Check up on subscriptions and direct debits

It’s always worth doing an audit of your subscriptions and direct debits every few months. There may be some you have that you’ve forgotten about and on reflection don’t think you need. Perhaps you have an audible subscription but can get audiobooks at the library for free. Or you have a beauty box subscription but have so many products still to use.

Make sure to go back far enough for those annual subscriptions like Disney+ or Amazon Prime. Really think about how much you use the service, and if you’re really making the most of it.

What are you doing to keep your finances on track?

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