Automate Your Finances

In an effort to further simplify our finance I picked up the book I Will Teach You to be Rich. This book is much less about getting rich and much more about making your financial life simple and automated. Previously, I had payed all my bills through my credit union, online bill pay, which was good. I used quicken to record it all but I hadn’t scheduled any of these payments to record automatically.

According to Ramit, I needed to go even further. I decided to automate all my payments. It’s definitely a lot more work up front but I’m hoping the payoff will go on and on. Here’s what I did after I read this book.

1. Opened an ING account online. As of this article-it was earning 1.5% while a 5 month CD at my credit union also earned 1.5%. I would much rather have the money available when I need it. I set up automatic savings to be transferred every 2 weeks.

2. Logged on, online to my phone and utilities websites and set up automatic credit card payments.

3. Logged on to my credit union and set up automatic transfer amounts to my savings to cover the above bills.

4. Set up Quicken to automatically record all of these transfers and payments.

5. Now, all I need to do is pay one credit card bill and cash the credit card rebate check when it comes in the mail!