It’s time to start week 5 of Money Management by Personal Finance Bloggers! Today, we’re speaking with J. Money, who runs Budgets are $exy.
Previous interviews: Blunt Money, Mighty Bargain Hunter, Financial Freak Show, PT Money, Moolanomy, No Debt Plan, ToughMoneyLove and Gen X Finance.
How do you spend: cash, debit or credit?
As much as I can on credit card baby! I find it an excellent budgeting tool as long as you pay it off in full every month (which I do). I spend roughly the same every month, so I might as well eek those cash rewards while I’m doing it.
Do you bank online? How about use a financial aggregator (Mint, Wesabe, Yodlee, etc.)?
I bank online at USAA.com aka the best bank e-v-e-r. Since most of my 10+ accounts are there, I find a trusty excel spreadsheet & google doc is the only other thing I need to manage it all and stay on budget.
What recurring bills do you have set on autopay?
Oddly enough, only a few things: Comcast, condo fee, and insurance. My income gets staggered so I like to manually pay the rest to make sure all is on point.
How are your finances automated?
Currently, they’re not as automated as I’d like. I deposit my paychecks, xfer out the money to the right accounts, and then manually pay a chunk of the bills asap to make sure I don’t forget.
Do you write checks? If so, how often?
Checks? What are those? 🙂 They only get the pleasure of my bad handwriting when it’s time to give a wedding present to somebody. All other times they stay in my drawer sobbing, knowing the end is near.
Where do you stash your short-term savings?
In a regular ol’ savings account. I like the freedom to xfer out at a moment’s notice, and having your accounts in one spot makes it even easier to manage it all.
Want to find out more about J. Money? Check him out at http://www.budgetsaresexy.com, follow him on Twitter @budgetsaresexy and subscribe to his RSS feed.
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Great interview!!! J how come you don’t use ING to pay your bills? Set up the automatic payment for ING to send a check to those bills that you have been paying manually….and it does it every month. That way you don’t forget and it gets done.
Yo! Just seeing this now – I like reading about everyone 🙂
@Lulu – I have an ING account but I’m currently just using it to store away some side savings until I figure out what to do with it (I opened it up to see what all the fuss was about – but I’m glad I did!). I use USAA for everything I have, and the bills I don’t have on autopilot are so I can manually pay attention & make sure they’re a-okay. Because of the way our current situation is, I can’t set everything up automatically yet, but one day!
@ J Money…okay mister, I will let you have a little leeway now, but there is no ‘ I can’t’ in budget!!!!!!
So I expect to see some changes in the next FOUR months.
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