Ten Steps to Simplify Your Finances, Part 2
Here’s Part II of my thoughts on Consumer Reports’ ten steps to simplifying your financial life. Today we’ll be covering steps 4-6…
(4) Automate investment tracking. Keeping count of your stock and mutual-fund shares and their prices can be tedious and time-consuming. But software such as the free QuoteTracker (www.quotetracker.com) can automatically update your portfolio using online data sources. You can also import data from QuoteTracker into spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft’s Excel.
(5) Dump your extra credit cards. Why carry a dozen when a few will do? Get rid of cards you never use and merchant cards you applied for solely to get a discount. Keep your oldest card because the longer your credit history, the higher your credit score. If you carry a balance, keep a card with a low fixed interest rate. Card issuers can raise a fixed-rate card’s interest rate, but they must give you 15 days’ notice. By contrast, an issuer can change the interest rate on a variable-rate card regularly and without advance warning. If you’re not satisfied with the cards you have and want to see if there are better deals, try the search engines at www.bankrate.com, www.cardratings.com, and www.lowcards.com.
(6) Use one home and car insurer. You’ll have to deal with only one agent, and you’ll snag a multipolicy discount as high as 20 percent on either your auto or homeowners policy or both.
My thoughts on these:
(4) Great tip. I do this with Quicken. Although I download share prices, however, I still update the transactions manually. Not sure why. I guess I’m just weird that way. That’s probably why I keep a paper checkbook register as well as one in Quicken, and can’t sleep unless they match at the end of the month. I’m an obsessive compulsive account balancer!
(5) I’ve never been one for store credit cards, and we’ve never had a bunch of regular cards, either. We currently have three total reward credit cards, and typically use only one or two at a time depending on what we’re doing (all are paid in full at the end of every month). That being said, it’s always tempting to jump on a 0% balance transfer credit card offer, or maybe a cash bonus or a bunch of free miles.
(6) This advice is spot on. We use a single insurer for everything. Not only does it simplify things, but we get a great discount for packaging everything together.
See also: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4
[Source: ConsumerReports.com]
Published on January 15th, 2007 - 7 Comments
Filed under: Credit Cards, Insurance, Saving & Investing
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We tried the single-insurer thing, but State Farm (which holds our homeowner’s policy) cancelled our car insurance…and when we went shopping around, we found out that GEICO is going to charge us a bit more than HALF what State Farm did, for the same coverage.
So while multipolicy discounts do help sometimes and are always worth keeping in mind, it still pays to shop around.
Comment by Matt — Jan 16th 2007 @ 12:01 amif you buy lots of stuff at a particular store, it is worth getting the store card. Some higher end have special cards that rack up points much faster and worth more than your standard cash back or rebate cards.
when you do dump credit cards, keep your longest held cards, though, over newly acquired cards. i think another blogger had wrote about it’s not necessarily the number of cards held that will affect FICO score. keeping track is simple if your bank allows you to input all your accounts. Mine are all electronic and I can see balances through my online bank account.
Comment by Tim — Feb 3rd 2007 @ 2:02 pm0% balance transfer is a very good option. I transferred a nasty 17% auto loan, or what was left of it after my divorce, to a 0% and save close to 1K in interest. The amount was to small to refinance, and that came handy, lately some CC, come with 0% until the balance is paid… that is great as it doesn’t set a time limit. I’d use it again. “Fico Score” vs. “Real money”, I’d go with the money, I’ll take the hit but save the money.
Comment by Nick — Jan 6th 2008 @ 10:04 pmThere always seems to be a tug-o-war between simplification of your financial life and saving making a few extra bucks. For example, transfering Credit card balances to get 0% is a time-consuming, but extremely cost effective method rather than paying 15+% on your credit cards. But, it is the opposite of simplification. I guess it just depends on what is more important to you in your given stage of life…
Comment by ChristianPF — Jan 23rd 2008 @ 1:15 pmIn addition, some companies offer discounts for your life policy too, not just the home and auto.
Many companies also require you to keep your underlying coverages there if you take out an umbrella policy. You would not want to find out that requirement the hard way… when you are filing a claim!
Comment by My Dollar Plan — Jan 23rd 2008 @ 5:32 pmIt took me 15 minutes and 2 phone calls to make the transfer. Fee was modest 75$ or 2.5% on my 3000 transfer. To auto refinance I couldn’t get 0% anywhere soo… I agree it was very effective, yet I disagree, it is rather simple procedure, or at least it was for me.
And as a conclusion… in any stage of life you have to save what you have, interests, fees and others promises of payments have to be avoided at any cost. I saved my money that I otherwise would have to pay as promised. I can pay it right away I have the finances, yet why would I, when I have 9 months of free money with 0% interest. Paid with someone savings… Best of money is their availability and quantity… the rest is joke.
PS. “few extra bucks” was over 700$ spread as interest over 2 years.
Comment by Nick — Jan 23rd 2008 @ 7:36 pmIt took me 15 minutes and 2 phone calls to make the transfer. Fee was modest 75$ or 2.5% on my 3000 transfer. To auto refinance I couldn’t get 0% anywhere soo… I agree it was very effective, yet I disagree, it is rather simple procedure, or at least it was for me.
And as a conclusion… in any stage of life you have to save what you have, interests, fees and others promises of payments have to be avoided at any cost. I saved my money that I otherwise would have to pay as promised. I can pay it right away I have the finances, yet why would I, when I have 9 months of free money with 0% interest. Paid with someone savings… Best of money is their availability and quantity… the rest is joke.
PS. “few extra bucks” was over 700$ spread as interest over 2 years.
Comment by Nick — Jan 23rd 2008 @ 7:38 pm