I can guarantee you have money going out of your account right now that you don’t know about. As a financial coach, I want you to spend money intentionally. Regaining control of your finances starts with matching your expenses to your values and goals. This not only helps you manage your money better but also opens up opportunities to increase savings, pay down debt faster, and spend money drama free.
In today’s episode, I share a money exercise I do with all of my clients: the cost-saving audit. An annual cost-saving audit ensures you are spending money in ways that feel intentional and align with your goals. I explain the importance of auditing negotiable bills and subscriptions so you can repurpose money to spend on things you love.
From checking your cell phone plan and car insurance coverage to managing TV subscriptions, I explain how to conduct a cost-savings audit to optimize your budget.
Learn where to audit your budget:
- [02:15] Auditing negotiable expenses
- [05:50] Auditing subscriptions
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn how to conduct a cost saving audit.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
If you loved this conversation on Aligning Expenses with Values: How to Conduct a Cost Saving Audit, check out my episode, Shift the Way You Think About Saving to Build Better Financial Habits!
Transcript for “Aligning Expenses with Values: How to Conduct a Cost Saving Audit”
Intro: Hi and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money File. So I want to talk to you today about doing a cost saving audit. I can guarantee that you have money going out of your account right now that you don’t even know is going out of your account. And this is something that I do with my clients all the time and even a habit that I encourage them to continue to do because who you were last July may not be who you are this August. And just thinking about the things that you sign up for, especially with the ability to sign up for subscriptions over your phone or maybe you signed up for something years ago but you haven’t actually noticed that the price is going up. And so actually being able to look at your expenses in a very neutral way and thinking about does this expense actually align with my values right now or the way that I desire to spend money right now?
But with this cost saving audit, it’s actually also being really intentional about how you’re repurposing the money because what I don’t like is when you guys tell me that you’re saving money but you’re not really saving the money because you weren’t intentional about where that money is going. And so when my clients are doing this audit with their finances, they could tell you like, Keina, I saved $20 on my auto insurance and I was able to add that $20 to maybe my eating out fund or I put that money into savings, like they can tell you very discreetly where that money is going and it’s not just absorbed into their everyday spending like yours might be. But regardless of where you’re starting, I’m encouraging you to do this audit so you can actually decide is this how I want to be spending my money right now. That is the main question you always need to be asking because I want to put you in the driver’s seat with how money is leaving your account. And I don’t want things to just be happening to you. We don’t want things to just be happening to you.
So cost saving audit. What I want you to audit first is I want you to look at bills that are negotiable. And I would also say this should be something that is an annual practice, bills that can be negotiable. It could be your alarm system, it could be your home insurance, it could be your auto insurance, it could be your internet, your cable, your cell phone SiriusXM. These are bills that you have that you tend to have enrolled in, but maybe you don’t necessarily check them from one year to the next, like my cell phone bill is something that I just look at annually just to make sure like am I still on a plan that benefits me?
I think all of us have a tendency to be in the cell phone plan that we’ve probably had since we were like 22 because you believe that you’re grandfathered into a plan that’s good for you, but it can be definitely worthwhile to just make sure that you are getting the best cell phone plan and just simply calling and asking, can you actually revisit my usage, look at the different lines on my account. Can you tell me if there’s some loyalty discounts? And actually having that conversation. You could have a conversation with the chat feature of your cell phone provider or you could just hop on the phone, like this could be something that you just put five minutes on your calendar to do because it literally could save you hundreds of dollars a month.
I had a client who didn’t realize that he could get a discount for the fact that his cell phone and his internet provider were with the same company. So I want to say he saved at least like $40 a month just by doing this. And he literally saved that because we made sure that we repurposed that money in his budget. But you can do the same thing. It’s always great to check your, you can do a cost comparison for like your auto and home insurance. I know if you’re like me, you have customer loyalty and you may have gone with a company years ago because maybe that’s who your parents are with. But it can be worthwhile to look at these numbers and call to negotiate those bills, whether it’s a good driving record. Sometimes they give you a discount for your credit score, but just ask them about the discounts that you currently are eligible for and make sure that you are getting the discounts that you’re eligible for.
But yes, your alarm, your insurance, your internet, your cable, your cell phone, I think I told you guys probably on one podcast, like my home security, they make your home security bill go up by like $2 or $3 every single year. And that’s insignificant, like per month it goes up $2 or $3. But when you think about them doing that year after year, it’s just something to pay attention to. Once again, putting you in control of your money because over the course of five years, that’s a $10 increase in that bill. And so I know my security system, they will lock me into another year or two year contract if I make that phone call. So that’s an easy way to go through and do a cost saving audit just to look at where in my budget can I make sure that I actually am not paying too much for some of my month to month bills. Also, what you can do in this cost saving audit is I actually want you to audit your subscriptions. I think subscriptions are the sneakiest way that things start to creep up.
One of my clients was laughing at me because I think every time we have a call, it’s like the first time, every time that I see how much she pays for Hulu and I’m like, are you sure? Are you sure you need to pay that much? She’s like, Keia, but I get HBO and I get all these other things. Like subscriptions are just one of those sneaky things that I think has crept up on us over the years, like people got rid of cable and just went to internet. But what that really turned into is you have a Paramount, Peacock, Hulu, Disney plus HBO, Netflix, you have all of these subscriptions, especially TV subscriptions and listen, if you are a TV person and you’re watching all of them more power to you. I know for myself, I am not a TV person. I watch TV while I’m like doing my hair or maybe if there’s somebody at my house, but I’m not really a TV person. So I don’t have a lot of TV subscriptions because I don’t really watch a lot of TV. So that’s not where I value spending my money.
But if you are someone who bought a subscription because you wanted to watch a series or a show, just making sure that you’re going back through that and you’re canceling it. If you’re not still using it. If you are someone who you’re like, I actually I have every TV subscription known to man Keina, good for you. But I would also ask, go through your subscriptions and really think about how much are you using that? Did you just buy Disney Plus because it seems like a good idea? And with your subscriptions you might want to go through and do an auditing practice that I keep revisiting cancel.
So you might decide of these subscriptions, what do I want to keep? You can go back through and decide what you want to revisit and then also think about what do you want to cancel? And you may revisit in the next 30 days or the next 60 days just to think about like, am I actually getting the usage that I think that I’m getting from my TV subscriptions? I think that that’s just something that we commonly do because you don’t want to not have the subscription just in case you want to watch something. And so there are other areas of your budget that can also be impacted by this, just in case, like it could even be down to a gym membership. If you have a gym membership and you’re keeping the gym membership just in case you want to go to the gym, it might be worth revisiting in 60 days.
If you have an option to pause it how about you pause it and let’s see how much you actually think about it. If you realize that you’re actually just making a donation, that’s a great subscription to actually cancel. And notice I’m talking about this not in a way from restriction, but I’m talking about it in a way because I want you to be in charge of how your money is leaving your account each and every month. And I want you to know that what I am actually spending money on, I want to keep all of these things, I know what I don’t want to spend money on and I have a plan to revisit certain things. So go through your subscriptions. It could be a clothing subscription, it could be a TV subscription, it could be a skincare subscription. It can be any of those things, but something that you’ve automated month to month that it’s not a bill of necessity, but just what I would call a luxury bill and go through and actually decide, do I want to keep, revisit or cancel this thing?
Because if you are spending in ways that aren’t aligned with what you value or you realize that they were aligned to last year, but maybe not this year, it’ll allow you to free up money that you can repurpose to use towards some other area of your life that you actually do value more. Like if you’re spending 30, 40 bucks on a subscription, that might be a manicure, it might be a pedicure that you want to take, it might be an every other month facial. It could be a lot of different things. And so at the end of the day, we want to ask ourselves like, do I want to be spending $30 on these subscriptions? It’s very easy also with Apple, I have a lot of clients that you just see Apple, Apple, Apple coming out and I’m like, just check it. Let’s actually make sure that whatever you’re paying for that, you’re intending to pay for that.
If you’re not intending to pay for it, we want to make sure that we cancel it. But by going through and doing an annual cost to saving audit, you can make sure that you are actually spending money in ways that feel intentional, they feel aligned and you can repurpose money that you’ve been spending and use it in some other way so that way you can actually be spending money in ways that you love. So that’s my short money exercise for you this week is go through, do a cost saving audit. And if you do this audit, I want you to email me at keIna@wealthovernow.com. Tell me how much money you saved. Tell me what you revisited, tell me what you canceled. I’d love to know how you’re actively implementing things that you hear on the podcast and I’d like to connect to the people that are listening to my podcast.
So if you want to take this work deeper and you’ve been thinking about like, I actually really want to work with a coach and someone who gets me and understands me, I would invite you to apply to my five month coaching partnership. So if you go to the link in the show notes, you can apply to work with me for five months. We’ll get to spend the rest of 2024 together, and we will easily sale into 2025 together as well. So thank you so much for tuning in and have a great week.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
