Doing #1GoodMoneyThing a day
August 24, 2015
I’ve been a little complacent about money lately. I don’t track our expenses down the penny like I used to. I pay our bills twice a month, some of them are automated, and that’s good. This saves precious time.
But! There’s room for improvement. (There always is.) And there’s always too much to do. So rather than waiting until I have a lot of time, I’m going to do a little money thing everyday. I’ll tweet it under the hashtag #1GoodMoneyThing and I’ll also share it here.
What’s a good money thing?
Almost anything that involves your money, in a good way! Simple as that. Doesn’t have to be a great grand event, doesn’t have to take hours. Heck, I’ll even include anything that’s good for your health since money means squat if you’ve got one foot in the grave!
Saturday: I started up researching refinance options again. Our mortgage is currently financed at 4.8% and that’s pretty high, but we’ve had problems getting any bank to touch the loan because of some HOA shenanigans.Ā Time spent: 1 hour.
Sunday: Via customer service chat, I added PiC as an authorized user on our phone plan so that if I am suddenly incapacitated or I croak, he can manage the account. Time spent: 3 minutes.
Care to join me?
It’ll be fun! I’m going to try this for a month, and then maybe weekly. We can give each other ideas. Comment here or use the hashtag so I can add your updates to future posts!
okay okay, you KNOW i’m a total ignoramus where Twitter is concerned, but by golly, I’m going to try to follow this one.
I have a friend who may be able to help find a lower interest rate — email me at the accustomed address if interested. Right now 4.8% ain’t great but it may not be all that bad…with the current stock market drama, rates might come down. Something to watch.
Good move, adding PiC to the plan. Not having a partner in crime, I have asked the CU to give my son access to my bank accounts (suicidal if you have a [ahem] a certain kind of son, but with mine it’s like adding Uncle Scrooge). If the VERY worst should happen — i.e., I don’t physically croak over but am as good as dead — he can access funds and keep the business going until he can wind it down. Another useful maneuver in that department is to have the utility bills auto-paid. Not so much at your age…but my dear friend’s aged mother, who was running the family finances, made that arrangement some years before she had a stroke…and before the aged father was partially incapacitated by a number of ailments of old age. DF’s decrepit parents lived out of state…DF remarked that knowing Dad’s water and electric would not be cut off was a godsend.
Especially when you have kids: as you get on in life, the more things you can automate without risking a rip-off, the better!
I have something in the works for the refi that’s looking promising but I’ll email you if it doesn’t pan out as I’d like.
That’s a good point – I actually still pay Dad’s utilities so if I ribbited out of here, it would be TWO families left a bit adrift. Though I don’t trust those suckers on auto-pay so it may just have to be line item in my “When I die, these things need to be paid…”
Fun idea! I think I try this almost every day. lol! Let me know how your experiment works out for you!
š I’d love to see your notes.
I will be following. I always try to drum up new savings idea. The problem is there’s so many things to do that I can’t do them all!
There is! But that’s why I like the idea of keeping it small / simple but daily for now. I can start one thing a day and it’ll add up.
Love this! We recently got back to our frugality roots as we had been focusing so much on increasing income we had been letting some stuff slide. I’ll be following and will join in!
Don’t feel constrained to frugality! This is ANY good money thing so growing income definitely counts too.
This is a great idea! I try to attend to most of the onerous stuff on Mondays, but my frugal lifestyle finds me doing little things most days. Last week I changed home insurance providers and our premium went from Ā£340 to Ā£140 a year for pretty much the same coverage. I’ll be checking every year from now on. Yesterday I registered to do my UK taxes online. I don’t really want to, but it will allow me to file and pay in January instead of October. The other thing I did recently was to update and print out my price book (best prices for food) to carry in my purse. I don’t do Twitter and I doubt I’d keep up with your daily aim, but I’m certainly happy to share my ideas and hope you will post an end-of-week or month list here on your blog.
Little things most days is how I’m finding this works best! And congrats on reducing the premium, that’s a large pocketful of cash. Do please share more – I love your list.
So, do more “passive” money things count? I had my annual compensation discussion yesterday and got the good news about my raise and bonus! š
100% yes!
[…] many people have chimed in with #1GoodMoneyThing tweets. I tried to catch them all – it was harder if it wasn’t hashtagged because […]
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This is great! A way to keep reminding yourself to be money conscious everyday. I, for one, am brown bagging it as I read this post!
Excellent!
I like this idea! I probably already do it most days, but being aware of it like this adds a layer of accountability!
[…] to figure out what we need to do to grow our wealth and limit expenses where possible. Trying to do #1GoodMoneyThing to improve my finances. My main need is to learn what to do with the money we already have saved: […]