Mad Hon · Balanced budget

Find the small leaks in your budget

Find the small leaks in your budget. A step-by-step Mad Hon guide for your Balanced budget score, written for olim.

1. Pull three months, from both sides.
Your bank statement shows hora'at keva, the standing orders debited straight from the account, plus direct debits and transfers. It does not show what a credit card charged you: Israeli cards are issued by separate companies, and those charges appear only on the issuer's own statement, usually as a single monthly total on the bank side. Open both, go back three months, and mark every line you cannot identify within a few seconds.
2. Look for the leaks that are specific to here.
Four kinds catch olim in particular. Tashlumim, the instalment option offered at almost every Israeli till, keeps debiting for months after a purchase you have stopped thinking about. A revolving credit arrangement on a card, often called kredit, turns a one-off month into a rolling balance. Standing orders set up on arrival, to a charity, an association or a service you tried once, outlive their reason. And toll-road and parking charges arrive weeks after the journey, so they never line up with the month you took it.
3. Multiply every line by a year.
Monthly charges by twelve, weekly by fifty-two, daily by the number of days you actually incur them. Write the yearly figure next to each one. The point is not to shame the coffee; it is that a decision made once against a yearly number is a better decision than one made twelve times against a small one.
4. Sort into keep, cut and test.
For each line, ask whether the yearly figure buys something you would choose again at that price. Keep the ones that do, without guilt. Cut the ones that do not, today, while the list is open. Put the uncertain ones in a sixty-day test: cancel, and see whether you notice. Most people notice fewer than they expect.
5. Move what you freed the same day you free it.
Money released with nowhere to go is absorbed by the next month's spending, and the exercise reads as a failure when it was a success. Set a standing order to a separate savings account for the total you cut, dated to payday, before you close the statements.

Find the small leaks in your budget. A step-by-step Mad Hon guide for your Balanced budget score, written for olim.

1. Pull three months, from both sides.

Your bank statement shows hora'at keva, the standing orders debited straight from the account, plus direct debits and transfers. It does not show what a credit card charged you: Israeli cards are issued by separate companies, and those charges appear only on the issuer's own statement, usually as a single monthly total on the bank side. Open both, go back three months, and mark every line you cannot identify within a few seconds.

2. Look for the leaks that are specific to here.

Four kinds catch olim in particular. Tashlumim, the instalment option offered at almost every Israeli till, keeps debiting for months after a purchase you have stopped thinking about. A revolving credit arrangement on a card, often called kredit, turns a one-off month into a rolling balance. Standing orders set up on arrival, to a charity, an association or a service you tried once, outlive their reason. And toll-road and parking charges arrive weeks after the journey, so they never line up with the month you took it.

3. Multiply every line by a year.

Monthly charges by twelve, weekly by fifty-two, daily by the number of days you actually incur them. Write the yearly figure next to each one. The point is not to shame the coffee; it is that a decision made once against a yearly number is a better decision than one made twelve times against a small one.

4. Sort into keep, cut and test.

For each line, ask whether the yearly figure buys something you would choose again at that price. Keep the ones that do, without guilt. Cut the ones that do not, today, while the list is open. Put the uncertain ones in a sixty-day test: cancel, and see whether you notice. Most people notice fewer than they expect.

5. Move what you freed the same day you free it.

Money released with nowhere to go is absorbed by the next month's spending, and the exercise reads as a failure when it was a success. Set a standing order to a separate savings account for the total you cut, dated to payday, before you close the statements.