Don’t waste cash on unnecessary direct debits – Martin Lewis
To enthuse you before we begin, here’s a couple of the hundreds of tweets I got after talking about it on ITV’s This Morning a few days ago… Louise tweeted: “Literally a 5 minute check on my online banking and found a phone bill, I was paying for a phone I don’t own anymore, and a subscription that I don’t even think I receive any more! Just been able to cut out about £100 a month! Thank you, Martin!” And Rob: “CV maker software £14.99 a month? I did one edit to a cv and haven’t been back on the site since. That was 6 months ago. They never even told me they were charging me”
Equally if you follow this and save, do let me know by tweeting @martinslewis.
There are three types of regular payments
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Hide AdMost of you will be familiar with two of them, but the third type is the tricky one.
Direct debits
Typical use: Energy & utilities. You give a firm your bank details and permission to debit your account when necessary, and it decides what to take and when, yet you’ve a right to ask the bank to stop it – but do check you’re out of contract first.
Standing orders.
Typical use: Regular payments to people. Here you set up an automated instruction to pay a firm or person a fixed amount, and you set the frequency. Cancelling is easy via your bank.
Recurring payments
Typical use: Subscriptions, payday loans, or pornography sites. These used to be known as continuous payment authorities – where you give a debit or credit card number and the firm can take payment when it feels fit. Yet they look just like single transactions so they’re tougher to spot.
It’s generally easier to cancel these via firms themselves, but sometimes they play hardball – since 2009 you’ve had a right to cancel with the bank, though some staff wrongly say you can’t.
How to find regular payments
Both standing orders and direct debits are easy to locate. If you bank online there’s usually a page that lists them, so it’s easy to check (best to do it that way so it includes currently paused subscriptions as well). If not, you can request it.
Recurring payments are primarily just about going through statements to check. There are some apps like smart-bill.co.uk and yolt.com which can help via the open banking tool. If you find firms you’ve not heard of, try Google or your bank.
Don’t be suckered in to keep payments you don’t actually want
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Hide AdI’ve written previously about my Money Mantras for shopping – for the skint, “Do I need it? Can I afford it? Have I checked if it’s cheaper elsewhere?” or the not skint, “Will I use it? Is it worth it? Have I checked if it’s cheaper elsewhere?” Answer “no” and you shouldn’t buy. We need to apply similar logic to regular payments too. Yet often we just leave the money flowing out of our accounts unconsidered.
Even then, many people may find it hard to decide which payment to keep and which to cut. And especially with subscription services, they know there’s a powerful psychology here.