New year resolutions that will pay dividends

Clear your credit card debt

A resolution to get rid of high-interest consumer and credit card debt is a good one.

If you’ve been paying off the minimum on your credit card each month, you’ll save significant amounts by increasing that.

If you have $5000 owing on your card and you pay $100 a month, it will take 94 months and $4311 in interest to clear. Increase that to $200 a month and you’ll clear it in 32 months and pay only $1314 in interest.

Get all the utilities discounts

If your utilities providers offer a prompt payment discount, resolve to schedule your payments to make sure you always get it.

There has been criticism that, particularly in the electricity sector, these are actually a late payment penalty in disguise, which means that people who struggle to pay on time end up forking out up to 20 per cent more.

Take, for example, the low-user fixed daily fee. This is limited at 30c a day, excluding GST – unless the retailer offers a prompt payment discount that would reduce it to this level.

If you aren’t getting the benefit of your provider’s prompt payment discount, you might get a better deal overall by switching to a provider that doesn’t offer one at all.

Earn more

Resolve to get a pay rise or to start a business on the side to earn some extra income to improve your financial position in 2019.

Over the past year, across the public and private sectors, wage inflation has been running at an annual rate of 1.8 per cent.

A minimum wage increase in April will help those at the bottom of the pay scale – it will rise to $17.70.