5 Ways to Improve your Financial Life in One Hour or Less (2024)

This is a sponsored post on behalf of our friends at Citizens Bank. Despite Citizens Bank’s sponsorship, all opinions and/or advice are provided by YoungAdultMoney.com. #sponsored.

We’ve all been there.

We planned on getting up early and working out to kick our day off right. But when that alarm goes off our bed feels warm and an extra thirty minutes of sleep sounds so nice.

But when we actually get out of bed and start our workout, it’s not so bad. Making that decision to get out of bed and work out is the toughest part.

Our finances are the same way.

It’s easy to procrastinate. Netflix is what gets me. When one of my favorite shows has new episodes, I find a way to justify watching the new episodes instead of spending that time working on my finances, writing, or some other productive thing I should be doing.

That doesn’t mean taking time out for entertainment and relaxation is wrong. But just like working out, working on our financial life doesn’t have to be a time-consuming activity. It does take some time, but it doesn’t have to be an all-day thing.

I’m going to share a few ways you can improve your financial life in an hour or less. Set aside thirty to sixty minutes on your calendar and knock one of these out. Or if you are ambitious, schedule time to work your way through the entire list.

1) Start Tracking your Spending

One of the most beneficial things you can do for your finances is start tracking your spending. If you’ve never done this you can still get started today, mainly because most transactions today are electronic. Pull the past month of detail from your credit card and bank statements and put it all in one file. Assign categories to each expense.

If you’d rather automate this process try giving Tiller a try. This does exactly what we just described, but automates it (other than assigning categories – that’s still something you need to do yourself).

Take a look at the past month. Does anything surprise you? Are you spending way more on food than you thought? Think of specific actions you can take to lower the amount you spend on categories that seem too high.

Get in the habit of doing this each month. Having multiple months is even more useful because you can see trends as well as be more aware of when non-monthly bills hit.

2) Review your Recurring Expenses

Recurring expenses sometimes are taken for granted, but they shouldn’t be. Perhaps a year or two ago the rate you got on your internet or cell phone seemed reasonable, but is it still reasonable? If you don’t review and question your recurring expenses from time-to-time, you may end up paying too much. You may find out you should cut an expense altogether (I’m looking at you, cable).

Some recurring expenses to review include:

• Cell Phone

• Auto Insurance

• Cable

• Internet

• Rent or Mortgage

• Subscriptions (streaming services, magazines, etc.)

• Annual Credit Card Fees

• Membership Fees (gym, monthly “boxes”, etc.)

The reason why this is so beneficial is because the savings repeats. If you can lower your internet by $10 a month, you are saving $10 every single month going forward, without doing anything additional. If you get a $20 gym membership instead of an $80 gym membership, you are savings $60 a month, every month.

3) Review Your Student Loans

If you haven’t taken the time to look at your student loans and repayment options, there’s no better time than now. As I did research for my book Student Loan Solution I found that a shocking number of borrowers knew little about their loans, including options for income-driven repayment or how they could potentially benefit from refinancing.

Set aside some time to create a student loan snapshot and better understand your loans. Depending on your background knowledge it may take more than an hour to fully understand your loans and the options available to you, but getting a current view of your student loans is something that you can definitely do in less than an hour.

If you are able to afford your student loan payments and are looking for opportunities to save further, you can get a free rate quote from Citizens Bank to see if refinancing your loans is a good option. For some, refinancing can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Getting a rate quote is free and can’t hurt, but before making any final decisions on refinancing federal student loans make sure you are comfortable and understand the benefits you will give up such as income-driven repayment and possibilities of loan forgiveness.

4) Update your Resume and Look at Job Postings

When was the last time you updated your resume? If you are like most people, it’s probably been a while. The reason why is because most people usually only update their resume when they need to. There’s nothing wrong with this, but regularly updating your resume will cause you to go through multiple drafts of it, limiting the risk of missing errors. It also forces you regularly to think through what sort of accomplishments you want to highlight when you eventually interview for a new job.

This also may cause you to think about how long you’ve been in your current role. Depending on your career, it may make total sense that you’ve been doing the same work for the past three years, five years, or longer. But for others who work in certain corporate jobs, it’s more or less expected for you to be moving into different roles from time-to-time that expose you to different aspects of your industry or career.

If you find yourself questioning whether you should start looking for a new role at your current company or externally, start looking at job postings ASAP. Looking at job posting well in advance of actually applying for jobs will help you understand what employers are looking for. If you are lacking in a specific technical or soft skill, you will still have time to polish those skills before you start applying.

5) Review your Pay (or Rates for the Self-Employed)

At the time of this writing, the economy is hot. Employees have a lot of leverage. I know people who have received 30%+ increases from simply moving to a new company. Reviewing your compensation, and seeing if it’s on-par for your job and industry, is a no-brainer.

This isn’t just meant for those with 9-5 jobs, though. If you are a solopreneur or own a business, you should review the rates you are charging. If an option, seek out others in your industry and have open conversations about rates. This approach won’t work for every business (will work better for creatives and solopreneurs), but there may still be research that helps identify what your competition’s rates are.

For those with 9-5 jobs, using a crowd-sourced site like glassdoor or PayScale will help you see if you are getting paid fairly for your job. For some larger companies you can even see what the range is for your specific role at your specific company (think “Financial Analyst” at “Walmart”).

This may lead to some tough conversations with your manager, or looking for a new role or company altogether. Again, this works best when the economy is doing well and companies are having trouble finding qualified candidates to fill open positions.

All of these things can be done in an hour or less. Work on these over a lunch hour, before work, on the weekend…whenever it best fits with your schedule and lifestyle (doing any of these before work is a no go for me – I’d rather do them late at night). Remember, just like working out, the most difficult part of improving your financial life is getting started.