This week’s topic is about budget reconciliation.
This is one of the most common mistakes with budget maintenance.
The most up and coming bills are tied to subscription based services which typically have no contracts. For example, this can be for YouTube TV, Chegg, or Adobe Audition that we use to edit this podcast.
Just recently, both of our kids were getting charged for a service they thought had been removed.
Hence, they seem to recall cancelling the monthly charge; however, this means that they did not actually do it.
In fact, I recently deposited a check into our son’s account and I noticed a repeated charge that I was certain he did not need to pay for. So after telling him about it, he was surprised!
So this means one thing . . . That he is not reconciling his budget.
We’d all be a fool to think that companies don’t track charges to their customers while knowing which accounts are inactive meaning they will not simply stop charging for their service.
In our son’s case, he gave away $15 per month and it cost him $180 which means even more on a college budget. That’s 12 month’s worth of payments.
Now here’s one that you can do when you should have cancelled a service:
Contact the company by way of email, phone or chat and follow these steps:
1. Let them know your cancelling.
2. Explain the reason why. If you get a bit personal they may sympathize.
3. Next request to have them knock-off some past charges
There is a good chance that you can get the current month’s charges removed or perhaps a partial credit.
So the lesson learned here is to complete the budget tasks on a monthly basis.
In our son’s examples, we know that they bring in more money than what they spend; however they also gave some of their money away.
One major rule that we follow on this podcast is to keep the money in your pocket rather than someone else’s.
Episode Link:
