Questioning everything reduced debt

In recent weeks I have spent many an hour studying bank statements and transaction records.

I’ve been doing this all in the name of understanding where my money is going and what value I am receiving for every transaction from my various accounts.

I found that while I was at the depths of despair with my failing business, I dreaded looking at my bank accounts. Which meant that I lost track of the transactions, especially the transactions that were set up to reoccur.

So recently, after dragging myself at least some way out of horrendous debt, I have recommenced becoming overly familiar with my accounts. And, naturally, I discovered transactions that should not be there along with many transactions that I felt were simply too large for what I received.

Culling direct debits

The easiest thing that I have done to date in order to reduce my spending is to kill as many direct debit transactions as possible. Micro transactions (commonly referred to as small value charges) that reoccur frequently (Netflix is a common low value and reoccurring transaction), are the death of many bank accounts. Many micro transactions add up to large amounts of money.

So by reviewing which ones needed to stay and killing the transactions that add no value to my life has resulted in a reasonable reduction in my monthly spend.

Question every charge

But my biggest saving to date has been from simply calling every single one of my service providers and asking them to lower their fees.

This sounds insane. But it works. Just last week I contacted the agency who manage my investment property and demanded that they reduce their fees. The call went like this:

Me: I’m unhappy with your service and will change agencies unless you do something drastic with your fees.
Them: How about we give you one month free and lower the fees by 1.5%.

It was almost that simple. Of course I did need to inform them exactly why I felt they charged too much. But once they realised how serious I was they then did exactly as I asked.

Another company that helped me save a substantial amount of money is my phone company. I called, told them that they charged way too much for such awful service, and they denied everything.

I expected this response given that I have spent many hours dealing with this company. So I then proceeded to move my way up from the service operators to supervisors and repeated my complaint over and over again. finally took my complaint to the actual complaints team and repeated myself again.

At the end of the conversation I not only had a lower monthly bill for my phone but I demanded that they pay me for wasting my time. I now have 3 months with no phone bills as a result.

The only time where I was told a blunt NO was when I questioned charges from my bank. So I closed my accounts and went to a different one.

Was this process rude, stressful and a little difficult at times? Absolutely, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

And what have I saved?

Over a 12 month period my savings so far, from culling unneeded transactions and negotiating on fees for services, will save me quite literally thousands of dollars.

My situation is more than likely different from you and many other people so the amount you can save won’t be the same as me. But it’s a process that everyone should take.

Know what is going in and out of your accounts, question what value you get for every purchase, and demand more for your money or a reduction in charges.

I’d love to hear your strategies so please share.

Image sources:
https://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/12/08/question-everything/
https://me.me/i/microtransactions-are-fine-beca-make-games-great-again-8354687
http://protoguy.blogspot.com/2011/04/banks-suck.html?m=1