It’s not always easy to be married to me. I may have once said something like this to my husband:
OK—here’s the new credit card you will now use for everything. Except for Target. For Target, use that gift card I bought you. If they don’t take AMEX, use this one. Oh wait, and for gas, use that card. But only until the end of March. And at smaller retailers, before you use a credit card, see if they’ll give us a discount if we pay cash. Has to be at least 7.2%. Love you!
The hubs isn’t a big spender by any stretch of the imagination, but this may have depressed it even further.
Truth be told, I used to make our financial life a lot more complicated than it needed to be, chasing bonuses from new bank and credit card accounts. Sure, it’s “free” money—you know how I feel about free stuff—but there’s also a real cost … a maintenance cost. I used to have time to track all of these accounts—and have lazy brunches … read magazines … tweeze my eyebrows—but as life has gotten more complicated (i.e. filled with children), I wonder about the value of recording that $0.02 of interest I receive each month (answer: low).
Next item on the LBYM end-of-year to-do list: simplify and consolidate the financial stuff.
This could mean everything from closing old bank accounts to cutting up credit cards to consolidating all your retirement accounts from past employers. And I’m not just telling you. I’m telling myself. I have an old-school pension from a company I haven’t worked for in seven years. I have four different checking and savings accounts with a bank that doesn’t have branches within 650 miles of where I live. I have many, many, many credit cards.
How many? 100 pages of credit report many. If you haven’t requested a free credit report, now’s a good time to do so. Go here. Takes about two minutes. Reviewing it … that might take a little longer. Use this opportunity to correct any errors and identify all the accounts you’d like to close. Then, get on the phones. Worst case, you get sent to a retention specialist who dangles some sweet deal in front of you to stay on for another year … NO! STAY STRONG!
Yes, doing these things will take time now, but trust me, they will save you time and energy in the long run … and maybe save you from forgetting about an account entirely.
Think it can’t happen? When a bank account becomes inactive, the money in the account gets sent to the state as unclaimed property. There is a LOT of unclaimed property out there … and not just from banks. Forget googling yourself, type your name into this website. Pretty much everyone I look up has something of value which they’ve lost track of. And getting it back is a pain.
You’re welcome. Also, stop looking up your exes.
Next year, after all the holiday cookie parties, I’m hosting a holiday consolidation party. Bring your laptops—and those cookies—and we’ll fire up the forms.