Tip of the Day: Find the Leaks in Your Money Boat

I just found three leaks in my boat this week.
And one of them was really big.

Honestly it's kind of embarrassing.

My husband and I have a credit card that we rarely use. It's set up so that if there is ever a balance on it, it automatically gets paid every month from our checking account. I never look at our statement because it's on auto pay. Out of sight out of mind.

Well this month we are tightening our belts, and that means looking for any and all places to cut back on our spending. As I was combing through our bank statements I noticed that my credit card has a payoff balance of $29.99 every single month.  So what is this money going to? I had absolutely no idea. It took several phone calls to track down the original source, but eventually I discovered that fifteen months ago I signed up for a document subscription service (I don't even know what that means!) and it's been charging my credit card every month since. Every month!  Fifteen months times $29.99, that's an embarrassing amount of money for a service I certainly wasn't using.

Further searching yielded two more similar accounts, things that we had somehow signed up for but were no longer (or never even were) using.

Just three little leaks in our boat, slowly draining our money away.

These leaks could be anything. Memberships to places you don't go. Subscriptions to things you never read. Banking or credit card fees that could be easily avoided by changing your account settings. The list is endless. 

So if you feel like you're barely treading water, or even if things are smooth sailing, it never hurts to take a second look at your financial boat and check for leaks.


Marcia