Tidy Up Your Finances This Fall

Fall is the perfect time to tidy up your financial life and we have some great ideas to help you get started. After all, life is expensive and most of us don’t have money or time to waste. Read on for four tips to help!

1. Consider Your Priorities – The first thing you need to do is easy. You need to stop and think about your life priorities because you work hard for your money to support the life you want. Do you have big longterm goals like early retirement or paying for your child’s higher education? Are you saving for a house? Are you just getting by and need to cut anything unnecessary? Once you know what’s really important, the purchases you make need to be weighed against the things you value.
2. Look For Wasteful Spending – How many streaming subscriptions does one household need? What about that app you forgot you signed up for in January? Be honest – will you really eat the broccoli you just bought? Does throwing away broccoli and ignoring apps help you achieve your goals? Is now a good time to refinance your home? A VCNB lender can help you with that decision. When was the last time you shopped car insurance or studied your phone bill? Americans waste billions of dollars every year on everything from spoiled food to unnecessary fees. A little mindfulness can go a long way in saving money.
3. Reassess Your Budget – We don’t like the B-word either but having an honest spending plan goes a long way toward managing your money and your mental health. Remember, budgeting can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Some people like apps and spreadsheets with pretty graphs that track their spending and savings. Some get by just fine with pen and paper. We have a few stories to help you with your budgeting efforts. This one talks about money resolutions and has a library about budgeting and money at the bottom of the story.
4. Explore VCNB Money Tools – We love our mobile app because it has so many features that can help customers clean up and simplify their approach to money. Here are just a few:

• Manage individual cards – Turn your card off when you don’t need it to slow possible fraud. You can also see spending habits for your card, limit where it can be used and choose the maximum amount of money it can be used for at one time.
• Pay bills and send money to friends – Set up autopay for your bills or go in and pay them as needed. This saves you time writing checks and money on stamps because there is absolutely no cost to you. Another free feature is Zelle® which allows you to send money to people you trust and for you to receive it too! You only need the cell phone number or email address for the recipient.
• Deposit checks – You can use the camera on your device to take a picture of the front and back of a check and deposit it into your account.
• Always know how much you have – Log in any time to check your balances, to view past purchases and to move money between your accounts.
• Set up alerts – Want to know when your direct deposit has hit or when your balance slips below a certain threshold? Alerts are a free way to keep track of money, bills and more!
• Google Pay, Apple Pay® and Samsung Pay – The mobile payment options all you to pay with contactless payment technology using your phone. It’s an easy, secure, private and quick way to pay!

When it comes to cleaning up your finances and how you manage your money, today is the best time to start! Learn more at VCNBfamily.bank and download VCNB Mobile from the app store on your phone!