Don’t put your life on auto-renew.

Once in a while, it’s time to just let it go.

What in your life is on auto-renew? What policies, subscriptions or memberships are set to automatically renew without any input from you? Do you even know? Have a look through your credit card statements and see if there are items that you weren’t even aware of. Still getting that magazine that no one reads? Oh, you’re a member of the gym from where you used to live? Maybe it’s time to let it go.

Don’t renew for the sake of renewing. Give it a deeper look, a fresh perspective and then decide if it’s still worth renewing.

Since we moved a month ago, we’re still picking up the pieces of automatic payments that we had completely forgotten about: AAA, Copyblogger, and even payroll services come to mind. How can you simplify your life, reduce, reuse and recycle beyond just your plastic bottles? If you’re not using something, at least put it on hold.

Take a quick look: what do you have on auto-renew?

Let’s see, off the top of my head, here are some items I can think of that I have on auto-pilot:

• Car insurance: don’t know why this popped into my head as we just sold our car. But have you shopped around your policy lately? Maybe ask an insurance broker if your policy could be improved.
• Website hosting: if your site is down, you’re down. If you want your domain, you want your hosting up.
• Domain names: bradleycharbonneau.com, yes. wpu.me, maybe not. What businesses are your future? Maybe it’s time to let go of the past: likoma.biz, likoma.info, wpu.me.
• Credit card: full payment every month. No exceptions.
• Mortgage: actually, I wish I could put this on auto-pay, but no, I have to remember every April and December.
• Memberships: what am I getting out of the various online groups I’m a part of (that cost money)? Which ones to hold onto, keep or put on hold. Maybe there is a new one that can replace multiple others in one swoop?

You’re not going to know if you just keep it on auto-renew.

On that note, bye bye Likoma.biz. It was an OK idea 10 years ago, but it no longer is relevant. Let’s say goodbye to likoma.info as well. What is dot-info anyway? Just another $12 per year for nada. Let’s see, $12 per year times 10 years = $120. It’s not a lot, but let’s say I used it on Facebook ads to promote, I don’t know, something I care deeply about? $120 can go pretty far in the world of targeted Facebook ads.

But that’s just it: something on auto-renew might have been deeply important when you set things up to go automatically. But what about now? Is it time for a quick look into what you’re doing with money automatically going out of your accounts?