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
3 min
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.
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Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Couples find that lab-grown diamonds make it cheaper to get engaged or upgrade to a bigger ring. But there are rocky moments.
4 min
Wedding planner Sterling Boulet has some advice for brides-to-be regarding lab-grown diamonds, which cost a fraction of the natural ones.
“If you’re trying to get your man to propose, they’ll propose faster if you offer this as an option,” says Boulet, of Raleigh, N.C. Recently, she adds, a friend’s fiancé “thanked me the next three times I saw him” for telling him about the cheaper lab-made option.
Man-made diamonds are catching on, despite some lingering stigma. This year was the first time that sales of lab-made and natural mined loose diamonds, primarily used as center stones in engagement rings, were split evenly, according to data from Tenoris, a jewellery and diamond trend-analytics company.
The rise of lab-made stones, however, is bringing up quirks alongside the perks. Now that blingier engagement rings—above two or three carats—are more affordable, more people are dealing with the peculiarities of wearing rather large rocks.
Esther Hare, a 5-foot-11-inch former triathlete, sought out a 4.5-carat lab-made oval-shaped diamond to fit her larger hands as a part of her vow renewal in Hawaii last year. It was a far cry from the half-carat ring her husband proposed with more than 25 years ago and the 1.5-carat upgrade they purchased 10 years ago. Hare, 50, who lives in San Jose, Calif., and works in high tech, chose a $40,000 lab-made diamond because “it’s nuts” to have to spend $100,000 on a natural stone. “It had to be big—that was my vision,” she says.
But the size of the ring has made it less practical at times. She doesn’t wear it for athletic training and swaps in her wedding band instead. And she is careful to leave it at home when traveling. “A lot of times I won’t take it on vacation because it’s just a monster,” she says.
The average retail price for a one-carat lab-made loose diamond decreased to $1,426 this year from $3,039 in 2020, according to the Tenoris data. Similar-sized loose natural diamonds cost $5,426 this year, compared with $4,943 in 2020.
Lab-made diamonds have essentially the same chemical makeup as natural ones, and look the same, unless viewed through sophisticated equipment that gauges the characteristics of emitted light.
At Ritani, an online jewellery retailer, lab-made diamond sales make up about 70% of the diamonds sold, up from roughly 30% two years ago, says Juliet Gomes, head of customer service at the company, based in White Plains, N.Y.
Ritani sometimes records videos of the lab-diamonds pinging when exposed to a “diamond tester,” a tool that judges authenticity, to show customers that the man-made rocks behave the same as natural ones. “We definitely have some deep conversations with them,” Gomes says.
Not all gem dealers are rolling with these stones.
Philadelphia jeweller Steven Singer only stocks the natural stuff in his store and is planning a February campaign to give about 1,000 one-carat lab-made diamonds away free to prove they are “worthless.” Anyone can sign up online and get one in the mail; even shipping is free. “I’m not selling Frankensteins that were built in a lab,” Singer says.
Some brides are turned off by the larger bling now allowed by the lower prices.When her now-husband proposed with a two-carat lab-grown engagement ring, Tiffany Buchert, 40, was excited about the prospect of marriage—but not about the size of the diamond, which she says struck her as “costume jewellery-ish.”
“I said yes in the moment, of course, I didn’t want it to be weird,” says the physician assistant from West Chester, Pa.
But within weeks, she says, she fessed up, telling her fiancé: “I think I hate this ring.”
The couple returned it and then bought a one-carat natural diamond for more than double the price.
When Boulet, the wedding planner in Raleigh, got engaged herself, she was over the moon when her fiancé proposed with a 2.3 carat lab-made diamond ring. “It’s very shiny, we were almost worried it was too shiny and was going to look fake,” she says.
It doesn’t, which presents another issue—looking like someone who really shelled out for jewellery. Boulet will occasionally volunteer that her diamond ring came from a lab.
“I don’t want people to think I’m putting on airs, or trying to be flashier than I am,” she says.
For Daniel Teoh, a 36-year-old software engineer outside of Detroit, buying a cheaper lab-made diamond for his fiancée meant extra room in his $30,000 ring budget.
Instead of a bigger ring, he got her something they could both enjoy. During a walk while on an annual ski trip to South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Teoh popped the question and handed his now-wife a handmade wooden box that included a 2.5-carat lab-made diamond ring—and a car key.
She put on the ring, celebrated with both of their sisters and a friend, who was the unofficial photographer of the happy event, and then they drove back to the house. There, she saw a 1965 Mustang GT coupe in Wimbledon white with red stripes and a bow on top.
Looking back, Teoh says, it was still the diamond that made the big first impression.
“It wasn’t until like 15 minutes later she was like ‘so, what’s with this key?’” he adds.
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
