How to Better Keep Track Of Small Expenses And Fees In New Year

In making financial goals for the new year, the approach many people tend to take is to go big. In doing so, they might be missing the small picture.

“These smaller goals become your true financial foundation, a solid base that is crucial for your financial success, especially when you start reaching and planning for the larger goals in life,” said Michaela McDonald, a financial-advice expert at Albert, a finance app.

Ms McDonald says many of her clients have asked for advice to help them achieve lofty financial objectives, but neglecting day-to-day financial health is often the reason people struggle to accomplish even half of their savings goals throughout the year.

For many, 2020 has been exhausting, so it might be tempting to write off little expenses and fees to eschew another headache. But small amounts can matter—here’s how to find and look at the tiny corners of your financial life without getting overwhelmed.

Track down your accounts

Joy Liu, a financial trainer at the Financial Gym, recommends tracking down all your accounts and debts—even the small ones.

“Sometimes, we can unintentionally have little accounts everywhere, so it might be a good indicator that you may need to streamline,” said Ms Liu.

Consolidating accounts can prevent you from being charged a maintenance fee on an account with a small amount that doesn’t meet balance requirements. Americans paid an average fee of $15.50 for not meeting the minimum amount for their interest checking accounts this year, according to Bankrate.com.

Tracking down small debts is crucial to your financial well-being as well. Ms Liu says the best way to do that is by pulling a full credit report to see if you have any unpaid debts. To order a free credit report, visit annualcreditreport.com. Federal law allows one free credit report from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion a year.

“From there, it’s just opening that stack of unopened mail to track down the other stuff,” she said.

Check on interest

A popular way to save on a bit of interest is to take advantage of 0% offers for a new credit card or balance transfer. These promotions often require a transfer fee, then for a set number of months interest won’t be charged.

If you have taken out any 0% offers on a credit card on another type of loan in the last 12 months, even for a small amount, pay attention when those promotional periods end. There might also be an annual fee for the cards you didn’t have to pay when you initially signed up.

“Make sure you have a plan to either have it paid off by that time or maybe do a balance transfer without being charged interest unintentionally,” said Ms Liu.

Mind the freebies

Perform an audit of your subscriptions, especially the ones which will increase in price in the new year. Some of the most pernicious monthly charges are from apps and free-trials that people forget to cancel or pause.

These charges can quickly add up monthly and prevent people from making headway on their financial goals.

Pay attention to small spends

Tracking small expenses can be time-intensive. There is the traditional way of printing out your credit card statements and highlighting all small expenses under a certain threshold, but it might be easier to let a money app or spreadsheet do the work.

Keep track of small fees as well, for banking and investment accounts. Ms McDonald encourages people to enrol in autopay for bills and other monthly expenses to avoid late fees.

Whether you are using a low-fee robo adviser or a human adviser, check in on whether the management fees or account minimums will change in the new year and whether the difference is worth comparison shopping. If you have been paying a “teaser” fee to try out a new adviser or product, evaluate the results to see if you want to stay with it.

As the war against Hamas dragged into 2024, there were worries here that investment would dry up in Israel’s globally important technology sector, as much of the world became angry against the casualties in Gaza and recoiled at the unstable security situation.

In fact, a new survey found investment into Israeli technology startups grew 28% last year to $10.6 billion. The influx buoyed Israel’s economy and helped it maintain a war footing on several battlefronts.

The increase marks a turnaround for Israeli startups, which had experienced a decline in investments in 2023 to $8.3 billion, a drop blamed in part on an effort to overhaul the country’s judicial system and the initial shock of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

Tech investment in Israel remains depressed from years past. It is still just a third of the almost $30 billion in private investments raised in 2021, a peak after which Israel followed the U.S. into a funding market downturn.

Any increase in Israeli technology investment defied expectations though. The sector is responsible for 20% of Israel’s gross domestic product and about 10% of employment. It contributed directly to 2.2% of GDP growth in the first three quarters of the year, according to Startup Nation Central—without which Israel would have been on a negative growth trend, it said.

“If you asked me a year before if I expected those numbers, I wouldn’t have,” said Avi Hasson, head of Startup Nation Central, the Tel Aviv-based nonprofit that tracks tech investments and released the investment survey.

Israel’s tech sector is among the world’s largest technology hubs, especially for startups. It has remained one of the most stable parts of the Israeli economy during the 15-month long war, which has taxed the economy and slashed expectations for growth to a mere 0.5% in 2024.

Industry investors and analysts say the war stifled what could have been even stronger growth. The survey didn’t break out how much of 2024’s investment came from foreign sources and local funders.

“We have an extremely innovative and dynamic high tech sector which is still holding on,” said Karnit Flug, a former governor of the Bank of Israel and now a senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank. “It has recovered somewhat since the start of the war, but not as much as one would hope.”

At the war’s outset, tens of thousands of Israel’s nearly 400,000 tech employees were called into reserve service and companies scrambled to realign operations as rockets from Gaza and Lebanon pounded the country. Even as operations normalized, foreign airlines overwhelmingly cut service to Israel, spooking investors and making it harder for Israelis to reach their customers abroad.

An explosion in negative global sentiment toward Israel introduced a new form of risk in doing business with Israeli companies. Global ratings firms lowered Israel’s credit rating over uncertainty caused by the war.

Israel’s government flooded money into the economy to stabilize it shortly after war broke out in October 2023. That expansionary fiscal policy, economists say, stemmed what was an initial economic contraction in the war’s first quarter and helped Israel regain its footing, but is now resulting in expected tax increases to foot the bill.

The 2024 boost was led by investments into Israeli cybersecurity companies, which captured about 40% of all private capital raised, despite representing only 7% of Israeli tech companies. Many of Israel’s tech workers have served in advanced military-technology units, where they can gain experience building products. Israeli tech products are sometimes tested on the battlefield. These factors have led to its cybersecurity companies being dominant in the global market, industry experts said.

The number of Israeli defense-tech companies active throughout 2024 doubled, although they contributed to a much smaller percentage of the overall growth in investments. This included some startups which pivoted to the area amid a surge in global demand spurred by the war in Ukraine and at home in Israel. Funding raised by Israeli defense-tech companies grew to $165 million in 2024, from $19 million the previous year.

“The fact that things are literally battlefield proven, and both the understanding of the customer as well as the ability to put it into use and to accelerate the progress of those technologies, is something that is unique to Israel,” said Hasson.

How to Better Keep Track Of Small Expenses And Fees In New Year

Neglecting day-to-day financial health is often why people struggle to achieve their savings goals—financial self-checkup can help

Track down your accounts

Check on interest

Mind the freebies

Pay attention to small spends

The 28% increase buoyed the country as it battled on several fronts but investment remains down from 2021