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Between managing retirement, paying bills, handling credit cards, saving for things in life you want and more, managing your financial life can get difficult.
Due to this, I am often looking for ways to make managing my financial life easier since at times handling everything can seem so hectic and stressful.
Making everything simpler and easier means that I can have more time to spend on other areas of my life, and also worry less about what I may be forgetting.
This is why I am creating this article. I believe that if you can learn how to manage your finances effectively as well, you can save a ton of time, have less stress, and focus on the things you truly want to in life.
Managing your finances does not have to be hard, and I want to show everyone that. Too many people give up and let their finances get out of order, when it really does not have to be that hard.
Below is how I manage my finances easily so I can save time and worry less.
I automate payments.
You can automate a lot in your life. You can have your paychecks direct deposited, you can auto pay your bills, you can even auto pay your credit card payment each month.
Even though I check through all transactions and expenses, I still automate all of my actual payments so that I never have to worry if something was forgotten about. Most of my monthly expenses are similar from month to month, so I can usually just check the payment to see if everything is correct or not.
Related: How To Simplify Your Financial Life – 12 Best Tips
I have one bank account.
Okay, technically we have two – a checking account at our credit union and a savings account as well there. I couldn’t imagine having more than that, whether it be separate accounts for different savings goals or if we had accounts at completely different banks.
Before you think “Don’t most people only have one checking and one savings account?”
That is not true. I personally know a few people who have multiple accounts open. To me, it seems like unnecessary work, but I understand that there are many reasons for doing this.
I keep note of credit card signups and rewards.
I have several credit cards so that I can earn credit cards rewards. In the past three months, we have actually signed up for five rewards credit cards (yes, FIVE!) and have earned a decent amount in free vacation and free cash back.
However, it does get stressful to think about all of this. Any normal person would feel stressed in order to manage this many credit cards, in addition to the ones we already have. Because of this, I have a detailed system of what credit card to use when, when I have reached the spending level so that I can earn the full signup bonus reward, and when I’m about to be charged for a credit card’s annual fee. It sounds difficult, but it really is not since I just have reminders set that will automatically remind me.
This leads to the next part…
I set reminders in my phone’s calendar so I don’t forget anything.
If there is something coming up that I know I will not remember, I will create a reminder. This makes managing my finances easier because I don’t have to worry about forgetting things or missing payments.
I create reminders for things such as:
- When it’s time to pay estimated quarterly tax payments.
- Renewing license plate tags for our cars.
- Paying semiannual bills, such as car insurance.
- When discounts and promotions expire, such as for our internet service, so that we can continue to get good deals on the products and services we use.
We have combined finances.
I know this option doesn’t work for everyone, and in some instances having separate finances with your spouse is a better option.
However, for us having combined finances works, and has worked for years. This makes everything very simple as we have less accounts to think about.
Our retirement is in a diversified fund.
Yup, most of our retirement is in one fund, specifically VTSAX.
It is a diversified fund, so it’s not exactly like all of our eggs are in one basket. Having everything in one diversified fund makes investing for our retirement easy in that I don’t have to waste a ton of time trying to beat the market.
Side note: I highly recommend that you check out Personal Capital if you are interested in gaining control of your financial situation. Personal Capital is very similar to Mint.com, but 100 times better. Personal Capital allows you to aggregate your financial accounts so that you can easily see your financial situation. You can connect accounts such as your mortgage, bank accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts, and more, and it is FREE.
Ways YOU can learn how to manage your finances more simply.
Of course, there are many other ways you can simplify your financial life.
You can learn how to manage your finances effectively by taking part in the actions below to make your life more simple:
- Start a cash budget. Dealing with only cash would be very easy as you won’t ever have to worry about making a credit card payment.
- Get rid of credit cards or slim down. If you are not interested in credit card rewards, then slimming down to just one credit card can save a lot of hassle and time.
- Pay off your loans. Whether you have student loan debt, credit card debt, car debt, or whatever else, paying it off will help manage your finances easier as you will have less debt causing you stress.
- Skip the paper bills. I hate receiving wasteful letters in the mail. Instead, I opt for the electronic version of bills whenever I can. This way I just receive an email when something needs to be handled.
- Create a budget through Excel. This can save you time in that you can easily make changes whenever they need to be made. It’s not as easy to make changes or have a flexible budget when you write it down as eventually it would turn into one sloppy mess.
- Opt for paying expenses annually or semiannually. Instead of paying for bills like home insurance and car insurance monthly, you might want to look into paying it every six months or once a year. You will probably qualify for a discount if you do this as well. That’s two less bills to worry about each month if you do this!
- Cut expenses out of your life. Each one you cut out means one less bill to worry about and money saved.
How do you manage your finances to make things easier? Or do you like to make everything hard?
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We do a lot of the same things you do – automate payments, combined finances, one account – and it makes life so much easier! Great tips 🙂
Thanks Nicola 🙂
I’m on your side Michelle, I only have one bank account too! I have lots of friends who have three or four bank account and I don’t really know why do that. 🙂 It’s better to concentrate on one bank and keep an eye on it.
I just don’t even get the point of having so many haha!
Everyone seems to enjoy automation. I also do payment automation and it really does relieve stress and I no longer have to worry about my bills. What I only do is just look how much my bill is. How great that is…
Yes, same here Jayson!
Automating payments and skipping paper statements has been such an incredible difference to my “pay the bills” routine. I can literally do everything in about 5 minutes whereas before it could have taken me 30-60 minutes to get everything organized and paid. I love that it makes things so much more efficient.
I agree! It’s a lot of time saved.
This is the perfect time of year for a comprehensive budgeting post like this and I really appreciate it. Trying to follow your advice on a regular basis. One thing we already do that you recommend in the “cutting down on expenses” area is that we don’t have a TV or cable. We watch Netflix on our computers. The gym we belong to (very inexpensive) has a TV with each cardio machine, and the TVs have cable. So if I really want to watch something, I have to go work out. It’s a win-win!
That’s a great idea that you have to work out in order to get your TV fix. Love that!
I am agree that is better to have combined finaces with your spouse, but not alls are agree…however we have siilar things but honestly today started officially my 6 months of shopping ban and the hardest thing probably will : resist to shopping into bookstores and for office supllies!!!
Good luck with your shopping ban 🙁
All great advice, Michelle. We do much the same. Automating bill payments and having joint accounts has really streamlined things for us. Since our paychecks are direct deposited and most of our bills are auto-paid, we don’t have to mess around much with our money on a daily basis, which is ideal for us.
Sounds like you have a good system!
Oh yeah, just wanted to say that I already failed my no clothing ban. I bought a $7 dress from a thrift store the other day. However, I did sell $60 to that same store, so maybe I am off the hook for failure? 🙂
I think you’re definitely off the hook ;)!
Yikes. I have about eight accounts; sorry. Some have done better than others, but they’re different types of accounts, based in different countries to which I travel. It works for me. Also, I only use one account for online purchases/shopping, so if a card is stopped, it’s never a hassle. Most of my accounts (six out of eight) are actually brokerage/investment accounts, though. I’m pretty good at saving so I don’t need to automate. If anything, I have issues spending too little money, because I’m picky about quality.
I think you have good reasons for having so many accounts. I just don’t understand people who have savings accounts at 10 different banks all in their same town. Not sure what the reason for that would be.
Yeah, I definitely make life hard for myself. I churn so I have tons of CCs. My primary savings account is from a different bank than my primary savings. I do have everything on auto-pay but usually I get so paranoid that I’ll accidentally miss a bill that I end up paying online before the due date anyway.
One semi-good(?) complicated thing I do which is actually kind of easy and saves me a decent amount of money is rebalance my own index portfolio in accordance with Vanguard’s own target funds. By buying into the individual indices, I end up getting much lower annual fees than the target funds, with essentially the same results.
How many credit cards do you have?
I like the advice at the end to cut expenses (and therefore bills!)
I have a complicated bank account setup (three checking and six savings for one person!) but it’s all for good tl;dr reasons. A little bit of a pain but useful enough to be worth it.
On the other hand, I simplify by: having a Mint account so I can see everything in one place; almost exclusively using one cash-back credit card; paying as many bills as possible automatically with that credit card (car insurance); and, like you, having a very simple investment strategy. It all works, although I might cut the number of bank accounts at some point 🙂
As long as it’s useful, then I’m all for it! 🙂
I track expenses and liabilities in Excel spread sheets, have one joint checking account, and one joint savings account. Unfortunately, we have balances on several credit cards, so I’m always looking to maximize our payments and minimize interest charges. Retirement accounts is an area where we could use some simplification. Both my husband and I have several 401K/403B accounts, and I have two Roth IRA accounts.
I hope you are able to tackle your debt soon Amy! 🙂
Automating definitely helps! We have multiple accounts; one with my former broker dealer pays all of our fixed expenses (mortgage, etc). Our regular check is for variable expenses (gas, groceries, etc). Then we have a regular savings, which shouldn’t be touched unless an emergency, a separate tax savings account and accounts for the kids savings (cash gifts from Xmas, bday’s, etc). This system works compliments the way my brain works:-) We also merged finances when we got married almost a decade ago. Again, works for us!
Sounds like you have a good system Gina!
We have multiple accounts!! We banked with Chase, then when we moved to NC we switched to BofA because there are no Chase’s here…but I have freelance income deposited into Chase still due to the fact that I haven’t switched it over. And my husband has a business checking account…basically, it’s a mess and we do need to consolidate everything. BUT, I will say, for now it does work. We try not to touch anything in Chase and I kind of like having different “savings goals” albeit confusing. Oh and we have a Synchrony online savings for our house downpayment…ay ay ay.
Ah that’s a lot of accounts! I hope you are able to eliminate some soon 🙂
I do a lot of the same things. Automating all my bills and going paperless has been such a time saver. But I take the time to actually look at my bills every now and then to make sure there aren’t any erroneous charges that I’m paying for.
Yes, if you are automating everything, you definitely need to still check in. This is a mistake that many make.
Great post! Organizing your finances is definitely worth the effort and it eliminates a ton of hassle and stress. For some reason I automate some, but not all of my payments. I’m the weirdo who likes to physically log in or call to make payments on certain things each month. But I’ve also stopped using an old credit card and went paperless a few months back which has also helped a lot.
Thanks! And haha you are not a weirdo.