You will be able to find recurring charges and decide for each whether to keep, downgrade, cancel or renegotiate.
Get out the three months of bank and card statements you gathered in lesson 1.2. Go through them and look for anything that charges the same amount on roughly the same date each month. These are your recurring charges, and they are where most people find the easiest savings in a budget.
Most of your spending needs a fresh decision each time. You choose the place, you pay, and you see the amount. A recurring charge needs only one decision, made at the start. After that, the money leaves your account every month and nobody asks you again. Sometimes you made that first decision years ago, or during a free trial you have since forgotten about.
Recurring charges stay hidden for several reasons. You don't need to decide anything after the first time. They never appear at a till. They often go on a card you don't check closely, and the amount is small enough to scroll past. On its own, a subscription at S$11, S$15 or S$18 looks too small to bother with. Together they add up, and they keep going. Four services at S$15 each come to S$60 a month, or S$720 a year, for things you may use twice a month.
Some charges don't always show clearly on a statement, so check these places as well:
streaming video and music services, including ones a family member signed you up to phone app subscriptions, which are listed on the subscriptions page of your app store account gym, fitness class and wellness memberships cloud storage, password managers, software and news sites phone plan add-ons such as extra data, roaming packs, handset insurance and content bundles broadband plan extras such as router rental, a TV box, or a speed upgrade you no longer need
Next to each recurring charge, write one of four words. Keep means you use it and value it at its current price. Downgrade means you want the service but not this version of it, so you move to a cheaper tier, a plan with ads, fewer screens or less storage. Cancel means you wouldn't miss it. Renegotiate means you want it but think you could pay less by asking, usually at renewal.
Look at gym memberships more closely. If you have not gone more than twice in the last month, you are paying a premium for the idea of going. Many gyms let members pause or move to an off-peak plan, so check whether yours does before you cancel outright.
Wei Ling, the course's example person, goes through her own statements. Her figures are made up for the example. She finds four subscriptions worth S$60 a month in total: video streaming at S$18, music at S$11, a second video service at S$15 that she signed up to for one series, and a fitness app at S$16 that she has opened twice since January. S$18 + S$11 + S$15 + S$16 = S$60.
She keeps music at S$11. She downgrades the main video service to a cheaper plan with ads at S$14. She cancels the second video service and the fitness app. Her subscriptions drop to S$11 + S$14 = S$25 a month. That saves S$60 - S$25 = S$35 a month, or S$420 a year, and she won't notice the difference on a normal evening.
Work out your own saving the same way. Add up what you pay now and what you will pay after your changes. The difference is your monthly saving, and twelve times that is your yearly saving.
Telco and broadband contracts are among the largest recurring bills and among the easiest to forget, so they need their own check. Many run for a fixed term, often 12 or 24 months. When the term ends, the contract carries on at the same price. By then your provider often has newer, cheaper plans, including a SIM-only plan for people who don't need a new phone. Providers rarely move a customer onto one unless the customer asks.
Find the date your contract ends. It is usually in your account in the provider's app, or on the original contract. Set a calendar reminder for one month before that date. When the reminder comes, compare your current plan with what your provider offers new customers. Then compare what other providers charge for the amount of data you actually use, which the provider's app shows you. Ask your provider to match the cheaper price or move you to a cheaper plan.
Wei Ling's phone contract ends in February. She pays S$30 a month and uses only a fraction of her data allowance. In this example, a SIM-only plan with enough data costs S$15. She sets her reminder for January.
A free trial is designed to turn into a recurring charge. It takes your card details up front and switches to a paid plan on a date you will probably forget. If you are not sure you will keep the service, cancel the trial on the day you sign up. Many services let you keep using the service until the trial ends even after you cancel, so you lose nothing. Some services end access as soon as you cancel, so check which kind it is before you cancel. If you decide you love the service, you can sign up again.
Pull your statements back up and filter for the charges that repeat each month. Then write keep, downgrade, cancel or renegotiate next to each one.
List every recurring charge from your statements and write keep, downgrade, cancel or renegotiate next to each one.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).