Whether you’re seeking ways to trim your loan repayments, top up your savings or tidy up your taxes, we offer 6 tips that could give your finances a spring makeover and put you on the road to financial freedom.

6 tips for spring clean your money

With the weather warming up, now could be a great time to spring clean your finances, especially given the extra cost-of-living pressures many Aussies face, such as higher petrol prices, and energy costs, mounting grocery bills and interest rates.

Here are 6 tips for spring cleaning your money:

1. Start the spring clean with a budget

If you don’t have a budget, get one as part of your springtime financial overhaul. Having a budget helps you see where your money comes from (income) and where it’s going (expenses).

If you don’t have a budget, don’t worry, we can help with our Easy Street Budget Planner.

Having a budget helps you record your income and spending while showing you where you can trim back, creating more opportunities to save cash or put aside money for bills and costs.

Setting up multiple transaction and savings accounts makes it easier to squirrel away some money for your expenses and lifestyle goals. With Easy Street, for example, you can open up to 9 savings or transaction accounts to help you save for expenses, whether that be school fees, a future tax bill, a deposit for a home or a family holiday.

2. Get a routine

Having a budget is one thing. However, if you struggle with budgeting and feel stressed about whether you’ll have the money to cover the electricity bill or school fees, try using a monthly calendar to organise your expenses (see an example of an Easy Street Bills Calendar below).

Even if it feels like you’re making good money, you might wonder where it all goes when you peek at your bank balance. If this sounds familiar, using a monthly calendar to organise your bills could prove just the trick you need to stay on top of your finances.

By creating a bills calendar, you’ll know the frequency of all your expenses (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly). It isn’t complicated but having everything plotted out so you can keep track of bills and loan payments and see things at a glance will give you a new appreciation for your finances.

If you prefer a digital solution, you can use any calendar app to organise your bills, such as Google Calendar or Outlook. Creating a bill payment calendar on a digital calendar is the same as a printed one – you need to write in your bill due dates and savings deadlines and add expected days when your pay or salary will hit your Easy Street savings or transaction account.

You can even spread costs relative to your pay. For example, if you get paid fortnightly but a bill is due monthly, you can switch to a fortnightly payment, or set aside half the monthly payment each time you get paid to make budgeting easier.

3. Set and forget

The days of strolling into a bank branch to make a deposit, withdrawal or pay a bill are long gone. Now with Easy Street’s online and mobile banking services, you can take some of the stress out of budgeting, paying bills and saving money by setting up automatic transfers.

There are many ways to manage your bills online. For example, BPAY® can be used to set up direct debits to pay your bills directly from your savings or transaction accounts, or you can schedule bills to be paid automatically on the date you set.

Plus, you can set up a recurring payment between accounts via Internet Banking to automate your savings and allocate funds to different accounts for different purposes.

4. Wash away excess repayments by consolidating debt

Another great way to free up some extra cash is by consolidating all your debts into a loan charging the lowest interest rate**.

Debt consolidation involves combining all your outstanding, higher interest debts into one lower-interest loan. In most cases, this means folding them into a home loan*.

Consolidating high-interest credit cards charging over 20%, for example, into your home loan can be a sensible strategy, as it reduces your interest repayments significantly.

Alternatively, you call roll together debts such as credit cards and other personal loans in to a low rate unsecured personal loan like Easy Street’s*.

Furthermore, the extra money freed up by a debt consolidation can be put towards paying off your debts faster or topping up your savings.

5. Top up your savings

Use the Savings tracker on the Easy Street mobile app to help you save for a big purchase such as a home deposit, travel, home improvements or even an emergency fund.

You can use our deposit calculator to find out how much you must save.

You can also manage your money, check interest, make transfers and more with Easy Street’s secure mobile banking app. Get it on Apple, Android and Samsung smartphone devices. The app is free to download and is available to members of Easy Street with internet banking access.

6. Tidy up your taxes

Get your taxes organised in advance this spring – photocopy receipts that you will claim at tax time, so you have them ready to claim on the ATO app.

While you’re at it, why not take advantage of the myDeductions tool within the ATO app, which is a free record-keeping tool that makes it easier to keep your receipts and other paperwork in one place.

Use the myDeductions tool to keep records of your work-related expenses (such as vehicle trips you make) and general expenses (such as the cost of managing your tax affairs or gifts and donations you make).

Then when you are ready to prepare your tax return, you can email your records to your tax agent or accountant or upload your documents to the ATO directly to help kick-start the tax return lodgement process yourself.

Head to our website at www.easystreet.com.au for more information about ways to spring clean your money in the lead-up to the festive season or call us on 1300 13 14 65.

*Terms and conditions, fees and charges apply.

**Credit eligibility criteria, terms and conditions, fees and charges apply. Consolidation of debts could mean your current loan debt may take longer to pay off with additional interest payable. Consider if this is right for your financial situation

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