Thursday, November 10, 2011

Automate Savings and Payments

Computers have changed banking in many ways. Lots of banks offer automatic saving services. Once a week the computer moves money out of the checking into the savings account. Most of the time these services are free. It's pretty painless and helps to enforce savings. The more saving you can do without thinking about it the better. The beauty of the system is that before you know it, you have saved a ton of money without effort. You want your saving plan to be as painless and unconscious as possible.

Also while you're at it, automate payments. I haven't written a check in years and I like it like that. The first account I had, I bought some pretty checks with flowers and a sunset. I thought I was so cute. But who was I impressing with pretty checks, the machine that rips open the envelopes. It was silly. Now I have already run out of checks and I don't care. I set up the online account and now I just point and click and pay the bills. I don't have to buy checks or stamps. This is bad news for the post office but I give them plenty of other business with eBay.

Save money and do stuff online. This also helps with budgeting because it's easy to see where the money is going as it goes out. Also never be late on a credit card payment because you can set up autopay and send the minimum every month on time. I don't do this because I barely use my credit card and when I do I zero it out at the end of the month.

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