Reviewing Microexpenditures!

It's a sad admission but I do get a rather smug sense of satisfaction from reviewing my micro-expenditures every so often.

I don't have to do this kind of reviewing that often as I'm quite well organised with my finances, so I tend NOT to take out subscriptions to services that I don't absolutely need.

So for the most part I'm not the kind of person who's got gym and Amazon Prime subscriptions running while I'm not using either.

But it's still worth looking at one's regular outgoings once a year or so as even £10 missed can mount up... £10 for a year is £120! Or £126 if you were to stick that in a high interest account!

Up for review....

The main things were my energy bills, car insurance, chat gpt and cancelling Prime.

Car insurance....

It occurred to me that I've probably had business insurance as a hangover from my last job, and I thought I could probably get a rebate of £50-£100 on this, NB I paid upfront so this wasn't urgent, but certainly something worth looking at.

However on logging I noticed that I only had the basic usage, as my current policy started about a month after I'd stopped needing that business class insurance.

Not an entire waste of time, mind, I did turn of auto-renewals, a pet-hate of mine. I don't know what it is with insurance companies, but they always seem to give you an inflated renewal quote, while if you switch you can get £1-200 cheaper, probably be the same when the next renewal occurs.

I changed this!

Prime

I've had a good run of cheap rate Prime over the last year.... my last three month half price deal ended on 26th Jan, so I cancelled that on the 24th, put in my last order on the 25th, for some pants, which somehow seemed appropriate.

The message when I cancelled said I could rejoin for £100 a year or something like that, I got the distinct feeling that they are not gonna offer me any more deals, which would be fair enough I'm sure I've had about 6 months free or half price in the last 18 months, but I simply don't value it enough to pay more.

Also without Prime it makes me think more about what I want - batch orders into once a month so they are over that £20 threshold, and just be patient. There's very little I need last minute TBH.

Bit of a cheat to include this one as I actioned this last week, but then again I told you I was organised!

Chat GPT....

I'm gonna explore Deepseak, however you spell it, this weekend and see if it's any good... I pay $20 a month for a GPT sub, and it's worth it as I do use it, but hell if the Chinese version is as good for 75% less I'll switch, unless ChatGPT offers me a comparable rate.

Energy Switching...

I'm currently with Scottish Power for both electricity and gas, no problems with this company at all, I had a look, I could save £100 by switching, but I just don't think it's worth it to move from a company that works.

I've dealt with too many utilities complaints in my job and literally none of them are with Scottish Power, lots to do with British Gas and Octopus, and the later featured on my switching options, I just don't trust them.

Sometimes paying a little bit extra to stick with what you know is worth it, this is one of those cases!

Final thoughts....

Even if you all you do by reviewing is save yourself one £5 payment, well that's more than you're likely to earn an hour.... given that it probably won't take you longer than 10 minutes to sort out a cancellation, that's like earning £30 an hour!

Posted Using INLEO