In many aspects of life, the more experienced you become, the better you do. If you’ve kept tabs on your progress and been conscious that you always moved forward, you probably are in a better position today than you were several years ago. And if you keep it up, you will be only advancing forward.
Your financial position also should be keeping pace with your life advancement. Your savings and investments should be growing along with your increasing income. Your financial relationships also should be strengthening and allowing you better services and products.
That is why it is important to pause and review many of your long-term financial commitments to see how far they fit your current position and status. If not, it is your duty to renegotiate them and get better deals that you deserve.
Here are three main areas to review:
Insurance
Insurance providers use many criteria to determine individual rates. These criteria are mostly related to the risk perceived, but that is not everything. Among the many aspects they look at is the bundle of insurance policies that you’re buying. If you’re at the beginning of your life and all that you’re insuring is a 20-year old car, your rate probably has little room for negotiation. However, if you’re insuring a couple of cars, a home, a boat and adding umbrella liability insurance, you certainly can get the attention required to keep you a happy customer.
Bear in mind, insurance providers also look at your claims record. So you’ll be in a better position if you’ve proven that over the years you were not high risk. In other words, if you’re not in a position to negotiate yet, work toward this end starting now.
Banking
Credit cards are not created equal. In fact, there is a wide array of credit cards with or without all sorts of perks. The more financially established you’re, the more likely your bank will be offering you one of the better deals on credit cards — at a small annual fee. If your bank reps are not active enough to pursue you, you probably should explore available opportunities with your bank and others. Similarly, if your credit card limit was established based on your income several years ago, you may have a good argument to boost it if your income has increased over those years.
In addition, many banks may offer you a better service if you’ve higher savings or deposits or have opened particular types of accounts. This personalised or priority service may not sound that important if your bank is typically helpful and organised. But if your dealings have been taking more time than you like and costing more than needed, pursing this priority status can simply translate in savings in time and money.
Returning, loyal customer
You typically don’t have to belong to a loyalty club to get preferential treatment, if you’ve been a returning customer. Salespeople from retail to real estate keep track of their loyal customers because they are often sources of referrals. If you’re one, stay in touch with your contacts and they will be happy to help you with special attention. It is how most sales-dependent professionals work. In short, even if it may be easy to try new service providers and go with any salesperson for whatever you’re seeking — buying a home or repairing car — it is better to build relationship based on trust with the ones who provided excellent service before.
The mutual benefit here is clear: while you become a valued customer for these service providers, your best interest is genuinely held high, which means that you receive top service that saves you time and money. The larger your network becomes, the easier it will be for you to find new reliable service providers when needed in new areas.
Having such a network can simply save a botched maintenance job or dishonest handyman, again translating into savings for you.
Rania Oteify, a former Gulf New Business Features Editor, is a Seattle-based editor.
