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Want to simplify your finances? Automate them!

If you've ever struggled with forgotten payments or lost bills, think you don't have enough money to save, or keep putting off retirement contributions because it's too far away, automation will change your life.

Automation will not only help you simplify your finances so you can stress less, but you'll also be able to adjust your spending habits so you can save more.

In today's episode, I'll go over 5 areas of your finances you can, and should, be automating.

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Below is the transcript from today's show. Or you can download the full transcript as a PDF.

Welcome to the Go From Broke podcast where you'll learn how to take control of your money so you can stress less and save more. If you're tired of living paycheck to paycheck or constantly wondering where your money is going, you're in the right place. This podcast is all about giving you actionable tips and advice so you can get started improving your finances today.

Automation is one of the best things I ever did to take control of our finances.

The primary benefit of automating our finances has been that it's forced us to prioritize our goals over our immediate desires. I mean, it's easy to say, I'll save whatever's left at the end of the month, but when we do that, how often do we actually have anything left?

By forcing ourselves to save first we limit our spending, not our savings.

Admittedly, this does take some getting used to, so you'll want to ease yourself in, but if you're interested in having more control over your money, here are five easy steps to automate your finances.

Step number one, set up automatic deposits.

The first step to automating your finances is the one that gets you your money the fastest, and that's direct deposit. Not only does it save you time by not having to drive to the bank or find an ATM, but it can also save you money. Most banks will waive any checking account fees that you have as long as you have direct deposit set up.

Step number two, automate your retirement contributions.

I know it's hard to picture your future self, but the fact is we're all living longer. And if you don't want to work forever, you need to start saving for retirement.

Ideally, you should be trying to reach the maximum contribution limit each year. But that's more of a goal than a starting point.

If you're not contributing very much right now, start with just an automatic contribution of 1% and as you see how those contributions affect your paycheck, you may feel more comfortable gradually increasing that percentage over time.

Also check with your employer's retirement plan to see what their matching policy is. Many employer sponsored retirement plans will actually match your investment contributions up to a certain percentage. That's literally free money. So if your employer plan offers it definitely consider contributing at least up to that level.

Step three, automate your savings and pay yourself first.

You could probably consider your retirement saving as paying yourself first, but that's kind of your future self. That money isn't actually available until you reach a certain age.

So to make sure you're building savings you can access now, you need to pay your current self to. And the best way to do that is by setting up an automatic transfer into your savings account or an investment account.

I use Betterment for most of our investment accounts. I follow the dollar cost averaging principle, which is basically where you make regular investment purchases over time to avoid or compensate for market fluctuations. So we put a certain amount in every two weeks. That way we're buying high, we're buying low. It doesn't matter, it all evens out. One of the main things I like with Betterment is that you can actually set a goal and then they'll tell you how likely it is you can reach that by the date you want to and what your monthly savings goal should be in order to reach that.

They'll also recommend what allocations you should use based on when your goal is. So the closer you get to your goal, the less likely they're going to put it in risky volatile stocks.

Now that said, while I love Betterment for longer-term investing for things like your emergency fund, for more immediate goals, and especially for your sinking funds, you're better off using a high yield savings account. That way you can pull out that cash when you need it and not have to worry about what the market did that day or tax implications and that sort of thing.

In either case automating the process will ensure that those dollars you're putting in are actually working to make more dollars while they're sitting there waiting for you to use them. And that will help you reach all your financial goals.

Step four, set up auto pay for your regular bills.

Setting up automatic bill pay was one of my biggest holdups. I felt like I would completely lose control and awareness of our spending and our discretionary expenses if I wasn't paying everything by hand. But boy was I wrong.

Automating our bill payments has been such a weight off my shoulders. I still make sure I'm budgeting for the bills, but not having to worry about which ones needed to be paid and when has made life so much easier.

So here are a few tips, when it comes to automating your bills.

Tip number one, you still need a budget.

You need to be budgeting appropriately. Just because you have automatic bill payments set up doesn't mean you can ignore the amount you're paying. In order to avoid an overdraft fee, you'll need to make sure you budgeted the funds to cover your expenses.

Good money management is important if you want to automate your bill payments. Creating a financial plan, setting up sinking funds and spending goals. Those are all great ways to ensure that you'll have the money when you need it.

Make sure you're also taking a look over your monthly bill statement to make sure that there are no errors or billing mistakes. And also don't forget about those non monthly bills, things that come up every year or every several months or six months, things like your car registration and your insurance.

Budgeting those in advance will help make sure you have the money there when it's time to spend it.

Tip number two is to take advantage of credit cards. Now assuming you have a credit card with no debt and that you pay in full each month, you could use it to pay all your other bills.

This would help you make sure that you're paying them on time and automating them so they're not coming out of your checking account, but they're actually going onto your credit cards.

Now, if you don't trust yourself with a credit card, or if you have outstanding credit card debt, skip this tip and move on. But if you don't have any issues with credit, this can be a great way to make sure everything gets paid on time.

Plus a lot of credit card companies will still offer you reward points on these types of transactions.

Again, only, only, only, only do this if you're able to pay your card off in full.

Now you could have debt on another card that you're paying off, but you don't want to use a card that has a balance because you're going to pay way more in interest than is worth it.

Tip number three, automate any bill that actually saves you money.

Some billers will actually give you a discount for setting up auto-pay.

I know my old student loan bill, I think our solar panel loan, and I want to say our car loan did this too, where you would get a reduced interest rate if you set up auto-pay.

And I know Verizon, I think we get a $10 discount per month by using auto-pay. The only caveat with both of these is that with most loans, you have to come out of your checking account anyways, but the Verizon deal in particular, you have to link to your checking account. So if you're not comfortable with that, it's up to you to decide whether or not the discount is worth it.

Now step five in ways to automate your finances is to actually automate your credit card payments.

This has been by far the most difficult automation for me. We pay all of our typical monthly expenses and our living expenses on our credit card. So we have a pretty hefty credit card payment each month.

But because we also make our purchases across several credit cards to take advantage of different reward programs, it can get pretty complicated to keep track of due dates.

So when I finally bit the bullet and automated our credit card payments I was literally amazed at how relaxed I was.

The trick with automating the credit card payments was to make sure that we would have the funds available. I mean, that seems obvious, but if your account balance is always trending low, you need to get that sorted first because you don't want overdraft.

So the best way to do this is to learn to trust your budget. You have to know that the money you're spending is in your account so that when it is time for it to actually come out of your account, you know it's there.

If you don't have a budget or you don't trust yourself to pay things in full you can still set up an automatic payment, but just set it up for the monthly minimum amount due.

That'll ensure that you don't get hit with any late fees or penalties, and that alone can save you hundreds of dollars a year. And it gives you a little peace of mind.

Plus there's nothing preventing you from making additional payments as needed. So if you're only comfortable setting up automatic payments for the minimums, you can still go in at any point and pay off the rest of your card yourself manually.

Even though I've automated our regular payments for our cards. I still manually go in every two weeks and pay down my balances. Mostly I do that to help keep my credit utilization score down.

But it's also a way to maintain more awareness of our everyday spending and our financial decisions.

Okay. So those were your five ways to automate your finances.

Now it's time for your action task. This week I want you to go and automate your finances. Whether you choose to start with just one of these steps or if you want to go all in and do all five. Automating your finances is one of the best things you can do to start saving more and stressing less.

So go set up some automations.

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend or leave a rating and review to help other people find the podcast.

As always take action and make it a great day.

Oh hey, before you go, I wanted to let you know that Go From Broke isn't just a website and podcast anymore. I now offer one-on-one financial coaching too. So if you've been stressed out and struggling to take control of your money, let's chat!

Head over to gofrombroke.com/coaching to schedule a free Q&A call where we'll discuss your unique situation and whether financial coaching is a good fit for you.

I look forward to hearing from you and can't wait to help you stress less and save more.