Nobody’s perfect, right? I’m not, you’re not — and we’d be kidding ourselves to think if we were.
And when it comes to money, we tend to make decisions emotionally instead of rationally, often becoming our own worst financial enemy.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You know that, and I know that.
Unfortunately, sometimes you have to make the mistakes in order to figure out how to do things right.
Fortunately for you, I’ve done these. So you can learn from my mistakes and avoid making them yourself. And thanks to financial automation, you’ll never have to worry about making them (and neither will I).
- I forgot to make a credit card payment.
Since I rarely use my credit card (and pay it off in full every month), I completely forgot about the bill sitting in the stack of mail. It had one charge on it, and I didn’t pay it that month. I didn’t even pay the minimum. Now, I autopay my bills, so I don’t have to worry about forgetting to make payments. - I never sent in the check for my cable bill.
This time, I remembered to write the check to pay the cable bill, but instead of dropping the envelope into the mailbox, I lost it in my car. A month or so later, after I checked out my account online and saw the bill hadn’t been paid, I found the envelope under the driver’s seat. Oops. - I wasn’t prepared for once-in-a-while expenses.
No one likes getting a big bill in the mail that they aren’t prepared for. It’s even worse when you could have prepared for it. I didn’t set the money aside for a car insurance payment, even though I knew it was coming, and had to scrounge for the money. Now I have an automatically filled once-in-a-while fund, so the money is always available when the bill comes. - A paycheck sat in my wallet uncashed.
There’s nothing more useless than a check made out to you sitting in your wallet, and not in your bank account. When you’re carrying around the check, it can’t earn any interest in a high-yield checking or savings account or be used to pay your bills. If you have direct deposit, your money is immediately available to be used or saved. - I forgot to track my spending.
It’s easy to procrastinate gathering all of your receipts, sitting down with a pencil and paper budget, and calculating your spending. But now that I use a debit card for all of my spending, I can see where my money is going online, either through my bank’s site or via my account aggregator.
Take it from me – mistakes happen, but it’s best if you can avoid them. Financial automation does the job.
Want to find out more about automating your finances? Download the first three days of Automatic Finances: 17 Days to Your Financial Freedom absolutely free!
