How to Run a 15-Minute Quarterly Money Review
You don't need a finance degree to catch what matters. You need a calendar reminder and a laptop. Four things you look at, four times a year, on purpose. Monthly reviews get skipped. Quarterly is infrequent enough to stay on the calendar and frequent enough to catch the…
You don't need a finance degree to catch what matters. You need a calendar reminder and a laptop.
Four things you look at, four times a year, on purpose. Monthly reviews get skipped. Quarterly is infrequent enough to stay on the calendar and frequent enough to catch the subscription you forgot, the balance that drifted, the rate that quietly doubled.
Put the review on the calendar before you close this tab.
First Saturday after each quarter ends — January, April, July, October. Coffee, laptop, fifteen minutes, done before brunch. Schedule the next one before you close the session.
Checking — scroll back to the start of the quarter.
Two things only. Recurring charges you do not recognize or do not want — cancel them from your phone before closing the tab. And the shape of your average balance — trending up, flat, or leaking down. Four minutes.
Credit cards — every card you use.
Total owed across all cards, start of quarter to end. Growing on purpose is fine. Growing by accident is not. Look at the interest line, not just the minimum payment — it is what the card is actually costing you. Three minutes.
Savings and investments — everything that is supposed to go up.
Did each account move in the direction you meant? If you contribute monthly and the balance dropped, is that the market or did your contribution stop? The math on an automated contribution is predictable. If the number is off, something is off. Four minutes.
Write down one number you are tracking.
Total savings, debt-to-income, months of expenses, net worth — pick one and log it every quarter. Trends are more useful than snapshots and you can only see them if you write the number down. Ninety seconds. Do not skip it.
Once a year, add a credit-report check
Make one of the four reviews (January works) five minutes longer and pull your credit reports. Each of the three nationwide credit bureaus lets you check your report free once a week at AnnualCreditReport.com, which the Federal Trade Commission names as the only authorized site for the free reports (FTC, Free Credit Reports). You are looking for accounts you did not open, balances that are not yours and addresses you never lived at. Anything wrong gets disputed with the bureau that shows it.
Why the interest line gets its own minute
Card interest does not announce itself. At commercial banks, the average rate on credit card accounts that were charged interest was 22.36% in August 2026 (Federal Reserve G.19 consumer credit release). If a card shows an interest charge two quarters in a row, write that balance down as the number you are tracking until it is gone.
Keep the log boring
One row per quarter in a spreadsheet or a notes app: the date, your one number, and one line on what changed. "Cancelled the second streaming service." "Rent went up." "Card paid off." After four rows you have a year of trend, and the next decision gets easier because you are not guessing.
Key figures
| CADENCE | 4× / YR | Jan · Apr · Jul · Oct |
|---|---|---|
| TIME | 15 MIN | per review, one sitting |
| LEAK EX. | $89 / MO | forgotten subscription, 3 yrs |
Four things you look at, four times a year, on purpose. Monthly reviews get skipped. Quarterly is infrequent enough to stay on the calendar and frequent enough to catch the subscription you forgot, the balance that drifted, the rate that quietly doubled.
— The one-sentence answer
If the savings line keeps stalling quarter after quarter, picking a first high-yield savings account is a ten-minute fix worth making before the next review.