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Just as the title says, do you automate your savings and what's your flow? Do you split your DD? Automate savings? Auto-pay cards/bills? Trying to build my personal flow to make this even more seamless for myself. Did I miss any ideas in the above questions?
I don't trust automation. I do everything manually. The only exception is that now that my roommates have AU accounts on my Cash Magnet, I have autopay minimum set up there just in case. It gives them the full billing cycle to make the payment without me getting stressed about it. Otherwise, I trust myself to do things correctly and have seen too many horror stories about automation gone wrong.
A little automation, but it can have problems. A Citi rep once managed to disable my login info, deleting my autopay settings in the process. I caught it in time, barely.
I'd prefer it if Chase CCs supported ebills to go to my Schwab checking, but I have Chase cards on autopay.
Nope. Everything is set up in my calendar to notify me at least 5 days before it reports or is due.
I have my direct deposit split:
Autopay:
Everything else is manual. I like to review things it's not all that complicated since it's only a few banks.
ToxikPH,
I have my direct deposit split into 3 different checking accounts, and that's the only automation I have for my accounts. I do not have autopay on any of my accounts. It's a small reason I went to into bankruptcy.
What I do is I have all the payment due dates and dates statements cut on my Outlook calendar. I also use the calendar to track pay days and dates I set aside to tranfer money into CD's and my IRA accounts. I have a spreadsheet listing all my credit cards and loans, and I manually update them twice a month.
After my bankruptcy, I have taken these steps to prevent the issues that caused my bankruptcy from happening again.
Guyatthethebeach
I have a small DD going into NFCU checking, but the rest goes into BOA checking. I use an Excel spreadsheet to track everything and do not do autopays, except for things that have to be a direct ACH like mortgage, HELOC, student loan, auto loan, life insurance policies, etc. I'm still working on paying down massive balances, so I purposely keep cash flow very tight to get them paid down. Monthly household spending can vary by as much as $5k in a given month so I do not have set amounts budgeted for each BT payment. I schedule pull payments from BOA as soon as statements close on all accounts for the payday prior to the due date, and my methods are meticulous enough for me to not worry about missing any payments.
I setup autopay for literally everything I can... but other than the mortgage I rarely use it.
I really don't use most of my cards anymore and so my credit life has become pretty simple; however, I usually go through my credit report every couple of weeks and if I see a random balance hanging out I'll go take care of it but the autopay has saved my credit ass before when I lost track, and really my only problems since I found this forum have been with a card that didn't support autopay.
I basically view it as one of my requirements, if the lender can't support autopay I close the account.
All personal income goes into one account and ultimately everything comes out of that account.
Other than direct deposit (split between checking and savings) the only other automation I do is loan/mortgage payments.
I put a fixed amount into savings every paycheck, plus the amount of my mortgage payment, which also comes out of savings. That way if I spend "too much" out of checking I still have enough to pay the mortgage.
All other bills are manual, since I can never know how big a given bill will be and I may have to shuffle payment dates/amounts around paydays. If I were "wealthy" (yeah right) I could automate more without worrying about running out.