Knowing if you’re being paid fairly for the work you do is a mystery shrouded in a lack of information. That may be changing, though, and pay transparency may be the catalyst. It’s a growing trend for companies to reveal what a job opening or current position pays — whether voluntarily, or because governments mandate it.

Navigating salary ranges

So far, about a dozen states and municipalities have mandated access to salary information, including California, Colorado, Washington and New York City. Companies in the jurisdictions are generally required to post salary ranges indicating the minimum and maximum pay. Rules vary: Sometimes only job applicants must be told, while other times current employees can also request information about their pay range.

Roberta Matuson, president of Matuson Consulting in Boston, consults with companies looking for top-tier talent. She believes pay transparency “is a step in the right direction.”

“Knowledge is power. So, you know, if you have no idea that you can possibly earn more money, then you wouldn’t even ask for it,” Matuson says.

Is this the end of salary negotiation?

Pay transparency won’t eliminate salary negotiation, says Lexi Clarke, vice president of people at Payscale, a national provider of compensation data and services. Instead, Clarke says it will encourage discussions of current and future pay expectations.

It will help employees and candidates “understand what their expectations should be, and where [salary] boundaries are and where there might be flexibility. It levels the playing field between employers and candidates to have a more open and transparent conversation,” she says.

And Lulu Seikaly, a senior corporate attorney with Payscale, notes that as current laws stand, employers aren’t prevented from offering pay higher than a range that is posted for a position, as long as the company can provide objective reasoning for the exception.

In the past, companies would often base salary offers on what an individual earned in their previous jobs, Seikaly says. “A lot of states have banned that now.”

If a potential employer asks for your salary history, Matuson says, “I wouldn’t refuse to answer; I would say, ‘Well, tell me what you’re offering for this position.’ I would just turn the question around.”

Will pay gaps be eliminated?

Pay transparency reveals salary ranges, but does it narrow gender and ethnicity pay gaps? It may be too early to tell.

However, Payscale’s Clarke says that organizations that are more open about salaries often have a well-defined compensation structure and are less likely to have pay inequities.

She predicts how the gender pay gap might narrow: “Women’s salaries will increase to where they should be — some overpaid men’s salaries may slightly decrease, to be more in line with where they should be.”

What if you’re at the low end of the range?

If you find out you’re at the lower end of a salary band, Clarke says pay transparency will help you communicate with an employer about what you think you deserve, “And you’re anchoring that all into data, which is really powerful,” she adds.

Matuson says to ask your employer how you can add more value and what skills you need to increase your pay and opportunities for promotion.

And it’s not just about money, she adds.

“There are other things that you could ask for,” Matuson says. “For example, you could say, ‘It would help me if I could work from home two days a week so that I’m not spending $50 or more a week on gas. Would that be suitable?’”

And if you’re at the top of the pay scale?

What if you find out you’re at the top of your job’s pay band? One result could be pay compression at the top of a pay scale, with the highest-paid workers facing increasing resistance about salary hikes. Should you worry that you’re maxed out and might be among the first employees to be cut if layoffs happen?

“Well, I think you should always be thinking, ‘I might be cut,’” Matuson says. But she adds that even if you’re not actively looking for a job, call a few headhunters to determine pay scales for your current work and potential opportunities.

If you’re trying to determine a suitable salary for where you are in your career, several websites offer tools that help you see a relevant range of pay. Check out Payscale, Indeed, Glassdoor and Salary.com for such tools.

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If you want to build momentum for your New Year’s money resolutions, set some financial improvements into motion before the end of the year.

Here are six easy-to-implement steps to help boost your net worth going into the new year.

1. Mind your health insurance deductibles

End-of-the-year financial planning strategies aren’t always this well-timed: “My son’s birthday is December 29th. His due date was actually January 2nd,” says Stacia Williams. “I begged my OB/GYN to go ahead and induce me.”

She knew her due date was close enough that the doctor could be flexible. And she also knew her insurance deductible would reset on Jan. 1, meaning she’d have to pay out of pocket as she began meeting the new year’s deductible.

“That saved us a ton of money,” Williams says. “He was my least expensive child!”

Williams is a founder of and a wealth advisor with the Williams Financial Group in Kansas City, Missouri, so she knows about such things. Suppose you’ve met your annual deductible or are close. In that case, you might want to schedule expensive medical procedures before the beginning of the new year, when your deductible resets and your out-of-pocket expenses could be much higher.

2. Use or lose your FSA balance

Being smart about your money often begins with employer-sponsored retirement, insurance and health benefit programs, says Marc Scudillo, a CPA and certified financial planner with EisnerAmper Wealth Management in Iselin, New Jersey.

He says many early-career workers have high-deductible health insurance plans combined with some type of tax-advantaged health savings account, such as a flexible spending account.

Many of these employer-sponsored health savings accounts are “use it or lose it,” Scudillo says. If there’s a balance still in the account by year-end, you may forfeit it. Some accounts have grace periods of a couple of months or so, and some allow you to roll over at least a portion, if not all, of the balance into the new year.

Either way, you’ll want to review that balance and your options before you end up having neither.

3. Plan holiday spending

Williams says budgeting for holiday expenses is a must so that you are confident you’re spending disposable income and not dipping into money needed to cover the necessities. That can be as sophisticated or simple as you’re comfortable with — from a spreadsheet to an app that helps track your spending.

She is also a fan of cash-back rewards and interest-free credit card promotions to help pay for holiday expenses (“it’s almost like layaway”). Just be sure to calculate the payment that will be due so that you’re confident you can pay off the balance before the interest-free period ends. And keep an eye on your credit limits; having more than 30% of a card’s limit in use can start to hurt your credit score. But your score will rebound as you pay down the balance.

Williams recommends holiday savings accounts when planning for next year. Some financial institutions offer incentives to open such accounts.

“That way, next year, your holiday budget is pretty much already set, and you can add to or take away from that,” she says. While these savings accounts don’t pay much in interest, it’s simply an automatic way to fund your holiday spending ahead of time.

4. Prepare now for tax time

“I always make my CPA earn her keep,” Williams says. She does that by having her tax advisor send her a list of receipts and documents to gather that will be needed for her particular tax situation.

She also suggests using an app to scan and organize receipts rather than stuffing them into an envelope or a box. It makes the gathering process “manageable and easy.”

Gig economy earners should also be aware of tax breaks and write-offs that they qualify for, Scudillo says — and have the receipts to back them up.

5. Monitor your credit

Monitoring your credit history and score is especially important this time of the year when fraud often seems to be on the uptick.

“You can be proactive by downloading a free credit tracking app,” Williams says. She says any errors or discrepancies should be reported to the credit bureaus.

6. Keep your life-after-work goals in mind

Check retirement plan limits and see if you can kick your contributions up a notch or two.

“One year-end review that we often see with younger professionals is that they get a bump in their compensation over the course of the year — but did they also bump up their savings?” Scudillo asks.

He suggests seeing if your employer offers an automatic annual deferral increase to its 401(k). Often called an automatic escalation feature, this lets you increase your employee contribution by a set amount each year, for example, 1% annually.

“We highly recommend that because it takes away that human inertia that people fall into,” Scudillo says. We often “delay, procrastinate or forget” to increase savings as our earnings grow.

“I think a lot of times we don’t ask enough questions,” Williams says. She says people barely like looking at their retirement account statements, let alone calling and asking questions about how to invest. If your employer offers a 401(k) plan, the investment company that sponsors the plan can be an excellent — and free — source of advice.

Scudillo has one final tip: If you don’t have financial goals, set them.

“If we had a certain targeted amount that we wanted to save over the course of the year, review: Did we get there? And if not, why not?”

Forget the daily $5 latte as an already timeworn example of less than mindful spending. One financial advisor had a client spending some $3,000 a month on sushi — without realizing it. The advisor convinced his client to track a month’s worth of spending and both of them were surprised by the results.

Solution: a decision about how much the client wanted to spend on sushi. Whether $3,000 or something less, it would become a part of a financial plan.

If you’re looking to build a cash cushion, sock away some savings and get ahead of your bills, it’s not a matter of sacrificing the things you enjoy.

It’s about paying attention.

What does it cost to be you?

Before he discusses investing a single dollar, Joe Lum, a certified financial planner in San Ramon, California, steers the first conversation with a client by asking “What does it cost to be you on a monthly basis?”

Some people may feel that managing money with a budget seems like following a diet to lose weight — making sacrifices and restricting behavior.

“It’s almost punishing yourself,” Lum says, “but it really doesn’t have to be that way.”

Knowing what you spend, monitoring those expenses regularly and avoiding falling back into old habits are the keys, he adds.

“Most people create a budget, not knowing how they spend money,” says Adam Hagerman, a Maryland-based certified financial planner. He says food expenses are often the “most out of whack” based on pre-budget perceptions — “what they think they spend versus what they actually do. It can sometimes be several hundred dollars difference.”

Dining out and entertainment expenses can also be higher than anticipated before doing a spending reality check.

Planning for occasional, but essential, expenses

Anticipating nonemergency, but still necessary, occasional expenses and setting aside money in advance can help you avoid dipping into long-term savings, such as for retirement, or tapping funds dedicated to true emergencies.

“What sometimes gets people tripped up are those known but periodic expenses. Things like tires on your car,” Hagerman says. “Not an exciting purchase and not something you have to do every single month, but when it comes, if you haven’t saved up for it, it kind of derails a lot of people.”

Hagerman helps clients build such cash cushions by creating “monthly rollover categories” of essential expenses. While an amount is budgeted monthly, the outlays happen only as needed.

Mindful spending

Hagerman believes it’s essential to see what you’ve spent in the past 30 days.

To curb discretionary expenses  — those wants rather than needs — he suggests setting aside cash buckets.

However, rather than the old-fashioned envelopes of cash dedicated to one category of spending or another, Hagerman is intrigued by a service called Qube Money.

It is a debit card with a zero balance until you allocate specific amounts to common budget categories. You authorize purchases in advance to be pulled from a digital envelope, called a Qube, before using the card. He says it’s a mindful way to discipline your spending without worrying about overdrafts.

“You’ve got to go into the app to load the money onto your debit card to even be able to make a purchase. That’s the definition of proactive budgeting,” Hagerman says. He says he’s not an investor in the service, but thinks it might be helpful if the app lives up to its potential.

Other budgeting apps, such as PocketGuard, Mint and You Need a Budget, use different strategies to track spending.

‘Vote’ for expenses you want to keep

Lum says that one of the biggest ironies is that we are urged to automate investing and saving. But the same hands-off approach to spending, such as recurring bill pay services, ApplePay and online purchases, can cause you to be unaware of where all your money is going.

“We’ve made it easier and easier to part with your money,” Lum says. “You could go seasons and seasons of your life without ever noticing that you haven’t actually saved any money.”

He recommends temporarily turning off autopay services so that you can “vote” for the expenses you want to keep.

Lum says once you’ve paid yourself first, then accounted for fixed expenses, you’ll be free to spend as you please, rather than feeling guilty about every little thing you’re buying. The goal, he tells clients, is to:

1. Save 40 cents of every take-home dollar.
2. Pay the essentials.

The rest, Lum says, is for fun spending. “You can be free and feel good about that, knowing that you’ve taken care of one and two,” he says.

The article Don’t Just Pay Your Bills — Pay Attention originally appeared on NerdWallet.

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