Overwhelmed with your finances? Financial topics can be time consuming and confusing.
Some financial goals, like paying off student loans or saving for retirement, can take years to achieve.
But no matter how big a goal is, you can break it down into small, actionable steps.
You can better your finances by focusing on quick wins. Here are a few ways you can improve your finances in 5 minutes or less.
1) Cut Cable
Cable is one of the easiest bills to eliminate entirely, so it’s no wonder why personal finance gurus always recommended to cut cable out for good. Depending on your current cable package, a monthly subscription can cost upwards of $100. Specialty channels can cost even more. That’s $1200 a year you can save by just cutting out cable.
By calling your cable company, you should be able to drop the service entirely. Sometimes, cable company representatives will do anything they can to keep you on their service, so be prepared to cancel it and walk away.
If you aren’t quite ready to give up television for good, you can start streaming Netflix and Hulu for a few dollars a month. And if you have an Amazon Prime membership, you have a variety of free shows and movies available to you at no additional cost.
2) Check Your Credit Score
Have a minute? You can check your credit score easily.
Potential lenders evaluate your creditworthiness based on your credit score, so if you are ever hoping to purchase a car or home, it’s important to know your credit score. Some jobs will even check your credit score before they hire you, so be sure you check it regularly.
Many credit cards will allow you to see your credit score for free on their monthly statements, making it an easy first place to check.
You can also use websites to check your credit score. Some websites charge you fees for checking your credit score, so be on the lookout before you sign up. The site we recommend people using is Credit Sesame.
3) Sign Up for Cash Back Every Time You Shop
No matter how frugal you might be, chances are you have still bought something online. Why not get cash back for every online purchase you make?
Ebates is a free website that automatically searches for coupons when you’re about to checkout. It then pays that discount back to you in the form of cash back. Ebates has a browser tool that allows you to search through the offerings of hundreds of retailers easily.
4) Consider Refinancing Your Debt
Refinancing means that you work with another company to lower the interest rate on your debt. Essentially, a third party company “buys out” your debt and potentially offers you a lower interest rate.
If you are able to refinance at a lower rate, it could potentially save you thousands of dollars on your debt. To figure out if if refinancing is a good option for you, you can get a free rate quote from SoFi.
5) Write Down Your Financial Goals
Most of us think we have financial goals. But how many of us actually take the time to write down our goals?
Writing down goals takes less than 5 minutes, but it can make a world of a difference when it comes to your finances. There is power behind physically seeing your goals written out and then putting them in a visible place.
So whether your next personal finance goal is to save more for retirement, pay off your student loans, save for a vacation, or to earn more, be sure to write it down.
6) Start an Emergency Fund
Have 5 minutes? You can easily set up an emergency fund if you don’t already have one.
An emergency fund is money set aside for when something unexpected or tragic happens, such as if you got laid off, your car breaks down, or you had to have an unexpected surgery. An emergency fund can protect your finances in the event that one of these unexpected things happens.
You can start an emergency fund easily by starting a separate bank account and setting up an automatic deposit every single month. That way, you can save without even realizing it.
7) Start Tracking Your Expenses
I admit it may take more than five minutes, but the first step to cutting the amount you spend is knowing exactly how much you spend.
Take the first step by signing up for a service like Tiller that automatically pulls your financial transactions and puts it in a uniform format. You can either use Tiller’s built-in spreadsheets or dump the data into Excel using our free spreadsheet to analyze.
Again, it will take more than 5 minutes to stay on top of your spending, but even five minutes is enough time to get started which is typically the most difficult step for most people.
Related:
What other ways can you improve your finances in just a few minutes? What do you do to stay on top of your money?
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I’ve done all these except refinancing my debt. I had the opportunity when I still had my student loans but since I was going to be paying them off within the next 12-18 months, the savings was negligible and not worth the application hassle.
Even the loan consolidator said that so either he didn’t want the sale or he was being a “fiduciary” without even knowing it.
Wow, that had to be an ironic moment when the loan consolidator told you not to refinance! My student loans were similar in that it wasn’t really worth the hassle to refinance. We did refinance my husband’s student loans recently, which has helped us make a much bigger dent in his principal.
I must tosay I never had cable and honestly I never missed it, there are a lot of interesting programs that I can see without pay cable and on long term I saved a big amount of money…for the rest I’m totally agree with all the voices of this post:D
That’s great! I haven’t had cable for years and really haven’t missed it a bit. One of the easiest ways to save money.
An emergency fund is very important when you are looking to improve your finances. For years, I didn’t have one. When things happened (flat tires), I’d stress out because I had to use my credit card for it. Now that I have an emergency fund, things are much better. I’m prepared for small emergencies.
That’s great to hear! I don’t think I could sleep at night if I didn’t have an emergency fund. I don’t try to live in fear, but so much can go wrong when you’re least expecting it.