Loyalty – a good quality for a person, but not necessarily for your budget

As I was meeting with a client last week, they told me that they were hesitant to close one of their bank accounts because they had the account since they were very young. It was their first bank account and having the bank account brought up feelings of nostalgia, as well as a sense of loyalty to the bank. 

The bank certainly did not share in those feelings towards my client. No, the bank charges them monthly fees, fees for paper statements, fees for banking in person – basically, the bank has no feelings of loyalty towards them. 

My husband experienced similar feelings of loyalty to a company a few years ago when he finally cancelled his Netflix account. He thought about all the movies and shows he watched, the Curb Your Enthusiasm DVDs he used to get in the mail, and all the great experiences it provided when he was younger. Over time, some of the shows and movies he loved were removed and the subscription price increased significantly. He grappled with no longer feeling like a valued customer, while reminiscing on those good times. 

Why do we feel loyal when it only goes one way? Big corporations probably don’t have our best interests in mind. Nonetheless, we might carry feelings of loyalty that have more to do with our experiences, what the product or service did for us, or how it helped us in a particular time in our life. 

If your service provider isn’t giving you services that support you anymore, then it might be time to find a product or service that does work for you.

Go through your spending and look for common expenditures that might be grandfathered in your current budget because of your familiarity with having them in your life. Are you keeping them around because of the value you receive or because it has established a corner of your budget that you haven’t assessed in a while? Can you do better by utilizing another service or product?