All The Financial Things We Automate
It’s not a secret that I love to automate anything to do with my finances. Last month I did a whole post on six reasons why you need to automate your banking. But this time I thought I’d talk through some of the financial things we automate as there are quite a few.
If you’re new to automation when it comes to money just think about it as something you set up that automatically moves/ does something with your money to save you doing it manually. We have some automations that happen weekly and monthly. We also have some which are triggered by particular events.
Financial things we automate weekly
I’ve spoken about our pay schedules before (I get paid monthly and Luke gets paid weekly). The way we split out our money is all of our fixed or regular expenses ranging from house payments to subscriptions comes from my wages. Then Luke’s money is used for all the other things.
This is just what works best for us. But this means that every single week we automate where the money from Luke’s pay goes.
So every week we have automations that move money to numerous different accounts automatically. And there are quite a few!
Our weekly automations include:
- Food money- we have an amount go into a separate joint account which is purely for groceries.
- Birthday and Christmas savings- money goes into sinking pots ready to spend on birthday’s over the year and Christmas.
- Fuel and vehicle savings- we put money aside every week towards fuel for the car and then for general vehicle expenses. This can include services, MOT’s, new tyres etc.
- Emergency fund savings- we have money that goes into a pot for our emergency savings. We have a good pot so far but we’re trying to build this up even further.
- Stocks and Shares ISA’s- we each have a stocks and shares ISA so money goes straight into those accounts.
- Takeaways and eating out- we save a little money each week to use towards eating out and takeaways. We do this because it helps us plan when we go out/ how much we spend. This way we’re not just mindlessly spending on our credit card.
- Home money- each week we put money into a home account for things we may need/ want at home. Currently we’re saving to buy a bread maker (which I hope will go on sale over Black Friday). And we’re also saving to replace some windows in our home.
- Our weekly spending- then finally we each get a weekly ‘allowance’ into our personal accounts to spend as we like.
As you can see that’s a lot of different places for Luke’s pay to be distributed around but the automations make it painless. When I wake up on a Monday morning it’s all done for me and our savings and sinking funds are all filled.
Personal weekly automations
Both me and Luke have our own personal weekly automations that comes from our personal money.
I have a lot of different pots on my Monzo account to cover for various sinking funds. So each week I have money that automatically goes into a fund towards tattoos, my Waterstones pre-order pot (I have a problem) and a small amount into a pot for Luke’s 40th. Now Luke is only 35 at the moment but I figured I’d rather put away £5 a week and have a good pot then stress closer to the time. For all of 2024 I’ve also been putting away some money every week towards the Young Adult Literature Convention that I’m going to next week!
Luke has his own savings automations to cover for some annual subscriptions he has alongside his annual trip to the UK Games Expo.
Financial things we automate ad-hoc
One of my favourite automations is my book reading automation. By using IFTT I have an automation set up that when I mark a book as completed in my to-list app it moves £2 into a pot.
This pot is then locked until the end of the year and I use this to treat myself to some new books/ pre-order things I’ve had my eye on etc. And seeing as I’ve read 119 books so far in 2024 the pot is looking pretty healthy.
Do you have any automations set up for your money?
21 responses to “All The Financial Things We Automate”
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Rhian Westbury
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I love having automation in my money life. I rarely send a check out. All my bills are automatically paid from my checking account. This is also great for the elderly.
I would like to get this sorted for my nan but we’ve not been able to set her up for online banking yet x
I definitely need to automate all our financials, this would help a lot especially that I rarely find enough time to take care of minor financial matters. Thanks a lot for the brilliant ideas.
We do the majority of our banking and business online or automated. It’s such a great way to make things easier.
Most of our bills are on auto pay, and that makes things much easier. We also do online banking, so we’re always covered on those bills.
That’s so good, glad you find it much easier x
Automating our finances definitely makes it easier.
I find automating finances really does help and something you do not have to think about
Glad it helps you x
I haven’t really put much thought in automating things when it comes to my finances! It sounds like a great way to save.
I feel like money related automations are essential to successfully tackle our finances. Thanks a lot for the tips!
Automating certain payments and bills reall does help you save and make sure they are paid on time in case you forget. I have used auto-pay myself and it’s a a life saver. Thanks for sharing!
I definitely need to look into this more and get my finances in check . Automating my finances would be SO helpful!
It saves so much time x
We do our banking and paying bills online but we haven’t done the automatic paying, but I think it’s a good thing. We never missed paying though because they always send reminders.
Automatic paying sounds interesting. We usually pay our bills online but not tried automatic paying. I got yo check it out how it works.
It is good to be able to automate as much as you can in life! These are great ways to keep a handle on things and manage not just money, but be efficient overall.
Anything to save you time and energy is the best x
Wow you are really organised with your finances, I am not at all in comparison but I know I need to be! I am really frugal but could still be better with putting money aside, this has given me a lot of food for thought
Laura x
There are small steps that you can make that can make a huge difference, so it’s never too late x
Automating our finances is a terrific idea because it helps us to manage our money effectively and efficiently. Thanks a lot for the tips!