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Hi, I’m Jacob Wade. You may have seen in features such as “budget and love it” and “who said frugal didn’t know how to partay?!”
I’m here today to tell you about a revolutionary new way to think about YOUR money. It’s an amazing tool that will allow you, the average citizen, to turn into a FINANCIAL SUPERHERO (cape sold separately). Come and learn how to not worry about money for the rest of your life!
Do You Lose Sleep At Night?
Do money troubles cause you to lose sleep? Are you irritable and annoyed when talking about money? Do you have a pile of unpaid bills mocking you every time you step foot in the door? Are your doors even locked? Did you remember to close the garage door when you left this morning? Are you sure?
Might want to double check on that.
But if you can’t stop stressing about money, let me welcome you to the most magical tool of all.
NOT HAVING ANY MONEY
You Thought I Was Going To Say Budgets
Budgets are awesome. I love them. But even better than having a budget is not having any money. I mean, if there’s none there, you don’t even have to think about it. No need to worry about something that doesn’t even exist!
I find that when there are things in my life causing me heartache, removing them usually solves the problem. Headaches, ants, hole-y socks, garbage, Justin Bieber music. The solution is to just remove those things as far away from my life as possible. Why can’t it be the same with money?
“But Jake, how do we do this? Don’t we NEED money to live?”
Luckily for you, I can unwrap this giant mystery here today, and everyone can leave here penniless and happy!
The Key To A Stress-Free Financial Life
So now that we all agree that removing money from our lives is the best course of action, let’s walk through the steps on how exactly to make this happen.
Send all money to www.iheartbudgets.net.
- Automate All Your Bills. The first step to ridding yourself of ever dealing with money is to just automate all your bills. Heck, might as well do it on credit cards to get you some free travel too! Whatever it takes to not have to think about money and live life as it should be lived: money free!
- Automate Your Budget For Necessities. Your bills are no longer a bother, they automatically pay themselves. Phew! Now it’s time to automate all other spending. Don’t let that grimy cash touch your perfect hands, gross! No, just hop on over to Mint.com, go to the “Budgets” section and create your budget to track all of your discretionary spending. You can then set email notifications for when you hit the budget limit on those items. No more thinking about money, just stay within your normal spending, and Mint will let you know as you hit your limit for a certain category. No thinking = no worries!
- Automate All Your Savings. Now that you have all your bills and spending taken care of, there’s all this leftover money still there, still mocking you, still stressing you out! Let’s get rid of it!!! First, setup automation on your bank account to send a set amount of money to your savings account for your savings buckets. Next, make sure you are investing up to your 401k match at work. Next, setup an automatic withdrawal to send money straight into your IRA at Vanguard. If you still have some leftover, put the rest toward your 401k for maximum tax benefit, and continued dollar-cost-averaging.
Phew! No more lost sleep thinking about your money, because it’s ALL FREEKING GONE! What a relief!
When The Money Disappears, So Does The Stress
It’s funny, but it totally works. When you don’t even have to think about the money, there’s no stress. As long as you have set out a plan to minimize wasted spending, and maximize valuable saving, you can enjoy life MUCH more!
So go ahead, get rid of all your money. Everyone’s doing it. Except, instead of blowing it on a hybrid car, save your way to financial freedom instead 🙂
Also, you can go check out Eric’s take on this over at LifeHacker.com where he featured this post.
Automating everything has probably saved me so many headaches it’s not even funny. It also helps when you know that you make enough money to cover your expenses you won’t be overdrawing your account on a monthly basis. The only reason why I check my accounts is to watch them grow!
Automation is a beautiful thing 🙂 And I love using Mint, because it gives us a real-time status of our finances wherever we go. Out of sight, out of mind 🙂
But I’m far too obsessed to just ignore my monies 🙂
I’ve done this for the most part. I have two accounts, one for bills and one for “other”. My bill account is awesome! Money goes in, money goes out. Easy. I still struggle with budgeting the rest. Car repairs, doctor visits, entertainment…
I’m going along fine then, BOOM, The Monkees are coming in concert. I CAN NOT MISS THEM! But, I didn’t account for this. I don’t know how…
Suggestions blog guy? Anyone else?
Yes, there is a solution!
Check out THIS POST
Haha… this was probably one of my fave posts of yours. Freakin’ hilarious, sir 🙂 (And also quite true – at least for most people)
Thanks, J. Money!
Very good post. I recall reading some statistical study about opting out vs. opting in when it came to retirement savings, and how models where the default is to save has its participants saving more. The (kinda obvious) point is that when people see a smaller take-home because automation is putting their money to work before they have a chance to touch it, they do a lot better.
I’m a firm believer in artificial scarcity to get your money right. Automation takes care of that. You can force yourself to live on (almost) any amount, it’s all about choices 🙂
I couldn’t agree more.
Automation = zen-like state.
If you don’t feel you have the wiggle room to automate and stop juggling:
Step #1: Downsize your home/apartment (usually the biggest fixed expense)
Step #2: Get transportation you can easily afford (usually the second-biggest expense)
Step #3: Build an emergency fund in an account you can forget about–3-6 months’ salary (not your usual savings account)
Step #4: Automate and forget about your money per the original iheartbudgets post
Phew! Now back to my zen-like state. Ooooaaammm….
Hah! It’s true! I’m all about removing the stress and enjoying the savings!
I should probably add THIS ARTICLE will lead you to the ultimate zen-like state 🙂
Great article. We totally agree with automating as much as possible. Between automating our 401K contributions and automating the paying of our bills, we’ve never paid less attention to our finances and been in such a good financial position. We know how much money we have to spend each pay period and that’s what we live off of and no more.
I think automating gets you more in touch with your money, if you do it right. Mint.com is great for that, allowing you to set limits on bills, and get emails if they ever go over a certain threshold. I check Mint daily, just to make sure things look Kosher 🙂
Great post, Jacob!
We don’t automate much, but we do have a process that ensures it all gets invested the way we want it to. I personally like to move our extra funds out of our accounts as soon as possible. Out of sight, out of mind! =-)
Automating your finances is the number one thing I recommend people do. I agree that when everything is automated you have way less to worry about. Thanks for sharing!
Jacob ! I LOVE YOU ! You are so helpful to me! Thank you. My retirement income keeps accumulating!
Automating payments is great because you dont get time to feel anxious about money leaving your account and delaying payments for things. I would also suggest creating a fun account so you can enjoy the fruit of your labor. I just withdraw the money at the beginning of the month and use that to go out and have fun and when that’s done, I dont dip into the rest of my funds. That way Im not always worrying about using money I budgeted for other things on fun and entertainment.
Great post Jacob! We automate every single bill and we automate the majority of our investing/saving. If we have some money left at the end of the month then we just manually invest/save it. I do check our credit card statements before they are paid just to make sure all the purchases are legit. When you know in advance where your money is going there is no reason to think about it.
Mint is fantastic. Once you have a decent history built up, you can look at trends and all kinds of stuff. Really brings the true cost of those “Oh, it’s just a couple bucks” expenses to light.
I’ve found myself spending hours on the site looking at the numbers and playing around.
And automation is great. I’m currently in the process of switching out one of our utility providers because they’re stuck in the stone age, and won’t automate via credit card. (gotta get that cash back bonus!)
I don’t feel like automating everything really makes a psychological difference for me, but I think I’m statistically abnormal in that respect. But when my friends or co-workers ask “I need to save money. How do I do that?” I always tell them to have it automatically deducted from their check and put into a separate account, so they don’t even miss it, and don’t have to think about it.
I do have a lot of our bills automated. Our phone bill, our internet service bill, our credit cards (in full, automatically), etc. Our city utility dept doesn’t have an automation system set up, so it’d be more trouble than it’s worth for me to try to automate it; besides, it’s only 10 blocks away, and what better excuse to go for a walk with my wife and kids? 😛
15 years ago I read a dystopian story about a guy who tot layd off from work. He went home to his automated apartment, through the electric door that recognised him as the owner. He ate and went to sleep, pondering how long his credits would last. Waking up in the middle of the night, thirsty. No water from the tap. The lights go out. There’s still water in the toilet flusher though. The airco stops… No air is flowing in the apartment. He walks to the electric door. Nothing happens. Phone is dead. There’s no way out.
And now this future is here, right here in this article. I’m a tad scared. (Sorry for the English, I’m not a native speaker)
I agree. We should not worry about money because anytime we can earn it through working for it.
Hey Jacob, I became a big fan of automation about a year ago. Wow, how it’s changed my outlook on money. I still maintain a budget so I can check back every month to see where I can trim the fat, but automation has made life much easier!
I really need to fully automate my finances. But for some reason, I do like looking at my income/expenses each week and paying off the bills manually – it’s cathartic for me! YES I KNOW IT SOUNDS WEIRD. But I agree, automating everything works for most people.
Not weird at all. I was on full manual mode from about 5 years. Still like tracking my savings funds manually, and love create budget spreadsheets for people.
I like your solution. Having money in the bank can bother you or your partner who wants to spend it can too. Once your regular income is allocated, you know what you can and cannot spend.
More than the tips I like the way you write your posts. You get people hanging on to your words all the way down. I am a fan.
I think I’m above average when it comes to handling money. But I still I preferred doing everything manually (spending, saving, etc.). Automating the process is good and a must try for people who’s struggling to manage their finances.
Automating is such a great tool if you do it right. I love Mint’s auto-budget that tracks your money. When automating, it’s important to look over your statements and your accounts once per week or so since it would be easy for unauthorized charges to creep in from out of nowhere. Great post!
^ this. Automation doesn’t mean ignorance. In fact, you should have an even better insight, because it’s all laid out for you. I check my stuff daily, but that’s because I’m obsessive about budgeting 🙂
I love that my savings and retirement is all automated. If it wasn’t, I think I would have zilch in there.
Keeping the allocated funds out of your reach is the key. No matter how disciplined someone is, out of sight, out of mind works well 🙂
Fun post and very true! I do love MINT as well and I’m (now) far to obsessed to not check it (almost) every day!
Its very helpful to save money. Before i’m not saving a money i’m always spend a money at a non-sense thing, that time I don’t have any money in my pocket, so from now on i’m starting to save a money so in case of any problem there’s no need to worry.