When Did You “Really” Last Look at Your Bank Statements?

Gary Oxborough is Practice Principal at Barlow Irvin Financial Services. This month he is helping you to save money. It is an amazing and quite worrying fact that a lot of people never look at their bank statements in detail to see where they are spending their money. I would imagine that it is even more prevalent nowadays that people do not usually get paper copies through the post and have to make an effort to go onto their online banking to access them.

When we are reviewing bank statements with our clients, we often find regular payments going out for things that the client does not really want or need. In fact, it is quite common to come across direct debits on statements where the client does not even know what they are paying for. Many companies who take regular payments by direct debit will happily let the payments continue, even if you are no longer using the service. This is really common with subscriptions to online services that seemed like a good idea a few months or years ago, but that you just do not use anymore. You could be paying £5 per month  or even more for an app that just sits on your phone and you never open.

Imagine if you found three or four of these that maybe add up to £30 to £40 per month that you have simply forgotten you pay for. That could be £480 per year that is being wasted.

As we are in the business of saving people money on their mortgages,  we look at that and think an extra £40 per month on a mortgage could knock a year or two off a repayment term and save our client thousands of pounds in interest over the mortgage term. Of course, you could always put that money to another use, such as a weekend away or something else that will make you happier than those unused mobile phone apps and subscriptions.

If you have half an hour spare and you have not done this in a while, why not log on to your online banking and take some time looking at where your money goes. You may be surprised how much you can save with a purge of superfluous subscriptions and payments.

Time to Talk?

Maybe you would like a review of your current mortgage to see how much money we can save you  or if you are a first-time buyer, we can help you.  It pays to get in touch.

As a mortgage is secured against your home or property, it could be repossessed if you do not keep up mortgage repayments.