The annual fixed-cost audit — a 90-minute walkthrough
ost household budgets quietly drift upward. A streaming service here, a software subscription there, a renewed insurance policy at a slightly higher rate — none of it feels significant in the moment, and the annual total can be surprising. A 90-minute audit, done once a year on a single afternoon, typically saves the average household between £1,000 and £3,000. The work is tedious but easy. The savings stay even after you stop paying attention.
Fixed-Cost Audit Flow
- 90-minute auditstart with
- Gather statementsneed
- Review categoriesfocus
- Set up next yearresult
- 12 months records
- Spreadsheet ready
- Biggest savings first
- Faster next audit
Table of Contents
Quick reference
90 minutes
Once a year, with last 12 months of statements and a spreadsheet.
Annualise
Always work in annual numbers. Monthly numbers don't register.
Top ten
Where the savings live. Below the top ten, fast pass only.
Three actions
Keep, negotiate, cancel. Decide one per line.
Insurance and bills
Highest savings per minute. Always shop or call retention.
Year two
Same spreadsheet. Half the time. Compounds.
Most household budgets quietly drift upward. A streaming service here, a software subscription there, a renewed insurance policy at a slightly higher rate — none of it feels significant in the moment, and the annual total can be surprising. A 90-minute audit, done once a year on a single afternoon, typically saves the average household between £1,000 and £3,000. The work is tedious but easy. The savings stay even after you stop paying attention.
What you'll learn
The 90-minute audit, step by step
The audit needs your last 12 bank and credit card statements, a spreadsheet, and 90 uninterrupted minutes. Coffee helps.
Step 1: List every recurring charge. Open the statements, search for repeated names, and write each one down. Subscriptions, insurance, utilities, gym, rent, phone, cloud storage, music, streaming, professional memberships, charitable donations. Aim for completeness; you'll be surprised by 4–8 charges you forgot you had.
Step 2: Annualise everything. Multiply monthly costs by 12. Quarterly by 4. The annual number is what makes you feel the cost properly. "£14.99 a month" doesn't register; "£180 a year" does.
Step 3: Sort by annual cost, descending. Your top ten lines are where the savings live. The bottom of the list is where the time-wasting decisions are.
Step 4: For each top-ten line, mark one of three actions. Keep — it's genuinely worth the cost. Negotiate — call them this week to renegotiate. Cancel — you're no longer using it.
Step 5: For lines below the top ten, take a faster pass. Cancel anything you're not actively using; keep the rest. Don't spend more than 10 minutes here.
Step 6: Schedule the calls. The negotiate items each take 15–30 minutes on the phone. Block them into one or two afternoons in the next two weeks.
Step 7: Set up next year's audit. Calendar reminder, link to the spreadsheet, list of bills to review. Future audits take half as long.
Where the savings live, by category
Energy
you usually can save 5–15% by checking once a year.
Bank and card fees
quietly significant; switching to a no-fee account often saves £100–£300 a year.
Streaming and subscriptions
the long tail; most households are paying for two or three services they don't use.
Mobile and broadband
typically reduces the bill by 15–30%.
Insurance
the biggest single category; shopping the policy every two to three years usually saves 10–25%.
Roughly in order of typical savings per household:
Insurance (home, car, health, life): the biggest single category. Insurance providers reliably raise rates each year on auto-renewing customers, and shopping the policy every two to three years usually saves 10–25%. Don't cancel coverage; switch carriers.
Mobile and broadband: providers always have a "retention" department that offers better deals to customers threatening to leave. A 20-minute call with the line "my contract is up, I'm looking at switching to [competitor], what can you do?" typically reduces the bill by 15–30%.
Streaming and subscriptions: the long tail. Most households are paying for two or three services they don't use. Cancel anything you haven't opened in 60 days.
Software subscriptions: especially for solo operators and freelancers. Most professional software has annual plans 15–25% cheaper than monthly. Switch the ones you're sure to keep.
Bank and card fees: quietly significant. Account fees, foreign-transaction fees, ATM fees. Switching to a no-fee account often saves £100–£300 a year for nothing.
Energy: in markets where you can switch suppliers, you usually can save 5–15% by checking once a year. In regulated markets, it's less impactful but worth a few minutes.
Not worth your audit time: changing supermarkets, switching cars, moving house, restructuring your mortgage. Those are larger decisions worth their own thinking, not bolt-ons to the 90-minute audit.
Setting up next year's audit
The first audit is the slow one. Once it's done, you can make the next one significantly faster:
Save the spreadsheet. Same lines, year over year. Adding a new column for the new year takes minutes.
Note the renewal dates. Insurance and subscriptions often have specific renewal windows where switching is easiest. Mark them in the spreadsheet.
Set a calendar reminder. First Saturday of January, or the same week each year. The discipline is in not skipping it.
Keep a "to renegotiate" list throughout the year. When you notice a price increase or a service you're not using, add it. By audit time, half the work is done.
Track what you saved. Add the savings up at the end of each audit and write the number down. Watching the cumulative number across years is what makes the audit feel worth doing.
In year two, the audit is typically 45–60 minutes. By year three, it's closer to 30 minutes — and the household has banked thousands of pounds in saved costs that compound year after year.
Want a more guided way to practise this?
Common questions
How much should I expect to save?
For most households, £1,000–£3,000 a year, with a high end of £5,000+ if there are multiple insurance policies and substantial subscription overhead. Smaller households might save £500–£1,500. Even the lower end is several hundred pounds an hour for the audit time.
Is haggling really effective on phone calls?
Yes, especially with subscription providers and insurers. The retention departments exist precisely because they save companies money to keep you. Threatening to leave (politely, with specifics) is the single most reliable lever. Many providers will offer 10–25% off without you needing to actually switch.
What about apps that do this for me?
Subscription-tracking apps (Rocket Money, etc.) are useful for visibility but charge a fee or take a cut of savings. They're a reasonable shortcut for the low-stakes "what subscriptions do I have?" question. For the negotiation work, you'll still want to do it yourself or hire a specific service for high-value bills.
When is the audit not worth doing?
When your fixed costs are genuinely small (£500/month total) or when your time is valuable enough that 90 minutes' opportunity cost exceeds the likely savings. For most households, the maths is clearly in favour of doing it. For a senior executive earning £400/hour, a paid service might make more sense.
Bottom line
Once a year, on a Saturday afternoon, with 12 months of statements and a spreadsheet: list every recurring charge, annualise it, sort by cost, decide keep/negotiate/cancel for each, schedule the calls. Most households save £1,000–£3,000. The savings stay; the work compounds; the audit gets faster every year. There's almost no other 90-minute investment in personal finance with this kind of return.