11 Financial Tips for the New Year

Does your New Year’s resolution for 2011 involve cleaning up and organizing your financial house? Or perhaps you want to find ways to optimize your savings and/or make more money. Get Rich Slowly has some great tips that will help you build a better financial future, starting today. Take a look:

  1. Review Your Accounts (and Ask for Discounts): take this opportunity to review contracts, agreements and financial accounts. Read credit card agreements, check service levels to make sure you’re only paying for what you need, ask for lower rates on monthly services and review your insurance.
  2. Optimize Your Accounts: consider doing the following:
    • Open an online high-yield savings account. Interest rates are currently low but will most likely increase in the months and years to come.
    • Find a checking account that offers you rewards and pays interest. Currently, the best of these are paying about 1% depending on your balance. However, you can usually find a better deal through a credit union or local bank.
    • If you don’t usually have trouble with credit, use a rewards credit card. Choose a card that works for you overall. Don’t just base your decision on the signup bonus or discount opportunities. If you do have trouble with credit, just stay away from the plastic.
  3. Get Out of Debt: try this technique of paying your debts off starting with the smallest balance:
    1. Order debts from lowest to highest balance.
    2. Designate a certain amount of money to pay toward your debts monthly.
    3. Pay the minimum to all of your debts except the one with the lowest balance.
    4. Put all other set-aside money into paying the debt with the lowest balance.
    5. When that debt is eliminated, continue paying the same on the other debts except the one with the next lowest balance.
    6. Repeat until debt is gone!

If you are using the New Year as motivation to take control of your finances, you do not want to miss the rest of Get Rich Slowly’s post. Be sure to check out How to Take Control of Your Finances in 2011 for more advice on getting out of debt, starting emergency funds and making more money.