Pic Sources: wjs.com
As the saying goes Time and tide waits for none, if you still haven’t taken any financial steps to boost up your balance before 2020 ends then you are not on the right track . To kick start your 2021 with a strong financial base, here are a few advises to take in note .
1.Don’t waste your FSA balance –
You may not know the fact that if you are having a FSA account through your employer as a part of your health insurance plan and you are not using it in each year, you will lose whatever money there is by the year end.
What you can in turn do is pull out the money from the FSA to cover up you medical expenses like prescription costs, medical supplies cost, 0office visit copays, etc.
The FSA generally comes with a debit card for you to pay expenses so it is up to you whether to lose it or use it.
- Utilize your HSA and contribute to it –
The people not holding an FSA may hold a HAS which stands for Health Savings Account which like an FSA to some extent can be used to cover out of pocket medical expenses .
The soul goal of an HAS is to help you offset the cost of high pricing health care plans and in turn makes health care affordable to families who struggle under the burden of many deductibles which sometime sums up to $1000 .
Unlike FSA it has a pro which is if you don’t use the money lying in your HSA then this amount rolls up to the next year resulting in no loss of money.
- Start investing least you can –
There is no best time for you to start investing than the time now. Don’t rely on dates or years for investing rather do it today. There are many websites which lets you start investing with as little as $1 and lets you to be a part of a bigger something which otherwise are exclusive to the richest of the rich.
You can invest a piece in well known companies like Amazon,Google,Apple with only a dollar and what you get in return is the share of the profit which is earned by the company.
4 . Improve your credit scores –
Keeping your credit scores organizes and keeping tabs on it is important as the credit scores play important role while you are going for bigger purchases like a home or a car.
It is all right and you are doing great if your credit scores are already on track but if they are not and you are trying to get them back on track then try using free websites available out there .
Using those ,you will get access to your credit scores in no time ,any debt-carrying accounts and a bunch of tips to improve your score. You can even figure out any errors which are holding you back.
In short, these websites will show you the ins and outs – and how to dot the I’s and cross the T’s .
- Take one step forward to protect the family-
The thought might have come to you and worried you many times about what your family would do after you and how they would be able to manage their living expenses if you are the only earning member of your family.
To put yourself to relief, what you can do is start planning to get a term life insurance.
You might think that you don’t have both time and money for the same but you should know that it only takes minutes and you can start with minimum amount like $16 a month . This would give you your peace of mind as you know that your family is safe after you.
6 . Use only one and maximum two streaming services-
Since lockdown was imposed and people were in quarantine , many of us got ourselves subscribed to multiple streaming channels like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus,HBO etc.
You obviously don’t need to carry them all to 2021.
It is high time to take an inventory of which subscriptions you are actually using and figure out which ones are only draining your money. As you figure out, what you need to do is unsubscribe those .
You might think that it is a small amount which you are paying as your subscription charges and it is causing no harm to your wallet but make yourself known to the fact that even one penny matters.
As you cut off the subscriptions, if it doesn’t cause harm to your budget then what you can do is use the money to invest it and earn from it.