Every year, I try to take a fine-toothed comb to my financial paperwork. Taking an annual in-depth audit of our medium-long term financial commitments helps us to stay on top of things and ensure that any financial products and services we are using remain good value.

Of course, we’re usually time poor and simply don’t get around to doing the leg work, but today things are different, most of us have time on our hands, so the perfect opportunity to do something positive.

If you haven’t done this type of thing before, I assure you that it’s not as tricky as it sounds, in fact the hardest part is finding all of the paperwork.

Firstly, make a list of monthly and annual payments: mortgage, loans, credit cards, insurance policies, memberships and subscriptions etc and then dig the documents out. When the papers are in front of us it’s much easier to see the important details: interest rates, early repayment penalties, renewal dates and for products such as mortgages, the end date on an interest rate deal.

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Now it’s time to fire up our preferred search engine and, using several comparison sites as well as the providers’ websites, check the market for better or cheaper deals.

Of course, some of the services and products won’t need renewing straight away, so pop the details in the diary and add a one month advance warning so that when the time comes we don’t have to make any big decisions without considering the options. It’s always worth asking the current provider to match any competitor’s quote; nobody likes losing business and giving them a chance to price match often proves successful.

Finally, when it comes to money invested, the above works just as well, but watch out for withdrawal penalties.