The Automated Life
After 5 years of trying, I’ve finally managed to completely automate my financial life. And a few other tedious tasks as well. I’m not even going to bother with an introduction that tries to convince you to go automated, because my theory is that you’re either with me or you’re not. Some folks (like my Dad), actually enjoy tracking the progress of their investment accounts several times a day. Or they save every receipt and carefully compare charges on their credit card statement every month (like my mom).
Not me. Even as a 16 year-old I couldn’t be bothered trying to keep up with that whole balance-the-checkbook thing. As soon as I started working as a food server and was mostly paid in cash, cash was all I used.
So, now that I’ve lied about not having an intro, here’s my setup. Some of these might be tricky to find depending on your work situation and where you live, but it’s worth it if you can pull it off.
- Direct deposit, of course
- Everything that allows credit card is auto-charged to an Amazon.com Visa* (Cable, phone, etc)
- Auto bill-pay from bank for things I can’t charge (rent, regular charitable contributions)
- Auto (no pun intended) insurance is deducted each week from paycheck
- 401K withdrawn automatically, of course.
- Roth IRA auto-pulls from bank account each month
*As for the Amazon.com Visa. The most important thing is that it allows you to make auto-payments that pull from you bank account and pay the balance in full each month. Almost important is the fact that you quickly earn $25 Amazon certificates, which is way more gratifying than waiting 1.5 years to earn enough for a frequent flyer trip, only to find out there are about 4 flights each year that you can actually use those miles for.
So that’s it. Now any financial time you spend can be directed towards creating and tracking your budgets.
This entry is part of the simple advice series.