Automated Finances — Expenses

As part of my year of automation, I’ll be applying it to my finances. It’s an overlooked area of my life and often a disaster.

This year, I’ll be going through my approach as it applies to me. As with anything financial, I’m not advising in any capacity, especially professional. It will also be about my thematic approach and not anything I’m fully implementing yet. I would cover all finances at a high level, but it is best to start under what I will classify as expenses.

Automated Bills

I’m not familiar with everyday banking outside of UK banking, so if there are things that don’t seem possible or unfamiliar, you can probably assume it’s a British or European based thing.

So this is an area I’ve probably already done the most on but will be looking at anywhere I can still improve. I pay by Direct Debit for every known bill upfront (especially UK-based, although I don’t live in the UK at the moment) I pay by Direct Debit.

Direct debit is an automated bill-paying system in banks, which means I don’t need to remember to pay it; it comes straight out of my account no matter the bill amount. This includes any credit card payments too, which I pay in full every month to avoid any charges or credit card debt accumulating.

Budgeting

The next class of expenses will all go under budgeting. I will be planning how much to allocate per month for anything and track what gets used from that. The automation will occur in splitting into categories through account transfers or by habit for cash. Tracking these “per transaction” expenses will be automated via app and habit entering it into the app.

This post was created with Typeshare