What do you automate? How often do you check everything?

summersetsheep

I have automated

• rent
• water (quarterly)
• council tax (monthly)
• gas (quarterly)
• credit cards (monthly or 18 months)
• pensions (monthly)
• electricity (quarterly)
• email/dns (every 3 years)

An account has high balance and gives interest. SO and DD from this account to the above.

Salary goes into a different account that has no standing orders or direct debits. I am never affected when banks fail to make payments or company makes salary payment on the wrong day.

I have to yet automate

1. investing - has been manual thus far
2. re-investment
3. groceries
4. emergency fund

Emergency fund is kind of just maintained by having a high balance everywhere.

I have a debit account that is used for day-to-day expenses or incidentals. The balance is kept low and a budget is maintained by having standing orders injecting small amounts of money in regularly.

Despite all this, I always seem to have to log into my accounts online to check all the other accounts that aren't my day-to-day account is as it should be and move money around to maximize interest. This was fun originally but has become a chore. There is enough in all the accounts but only for a certain time period.

How often do you check everything?

How have you laid out your accounts to minimize effort?

How long could you ignore your finances before something would go wrong?

Do you use mobile banking?

Dird

Login on 1st/2nd to do transfers for interest.
Money shuffles whenever a DirectDebit/Reg Saver comes out (always makes me overdrawn)
Occassionally a TSB shuffle (topping it back to £1.5k) as it's my main debit card
Everything manual, no SOs

jennyjj

I maintain an Excel workbook of account balances, major liquid assets, and share values. Workbook updated roughly every 2nd or third Weekend. It has a column for interest rates applicable and I use it to remind me to push money to where it does best.

Nearly all bills are direct debit and by monitoring, I can maintain my current account in sufficient credit easily enough.

If I let it go to seed for two or three months, I'd slip into approved overdraft, but that has not happened yet.

That workbook also provides enough info (clues) to my next of kin, should that be needed. Access suitably controlled.

colsten

Gas, electricity, water, council tax, broadband, mobile are all on DD. Insurances are manual once a year. I still have over two dozen current accounts, most of which require monthly deposits. Most of those are done by SO, except for accounts like the COOP, Halifax and Barclays which don't have a balance high enough to pay for the outgoing SO. These are handled manually once a month. Refilling TSB accounts after the monthly contactless money has come out is also done manually.

In addition, I have several Monthly Saver accounts which also get fed by SO and a couple of reserve savings accounts holding funds for drip feeding the Monthly Savers and to hold money for ISAs, SIPP and spending money. There are also a handful of credit cards, Investment accounts and electronic wallets. In total it's around 90 accounts so I need to be pretty organised if I want to stay on top of things.

All accounts are recorded in AceMoney, together with all the DDs and SOs. I add any ad-hoc transactions (cash withdrawals etc) separately. I don't add details of my credit card transactions although I might start doing this. Currently, 95%+ of my regular spending is on 2 credit cards that send me text messages if my balance goes above the max monthly budget, and they get paid off in full each month by DD.

I check the balances of all but a few of these accounts daily, using an account aggregator. It usually takes just a couple of minutes and I got used to it - it's just like cleaning teeth every day. My set-up allows me to do this even when I am away from home, as long as I have an internet connection. The accounts I don't check daily are Building Society accounts not supported by the aggregator, and I check them manually once a month after the monthly payments have gone in. Any difference between AceMoney and my actual balance gets sorted immediately (e.g. registering of interest payments), and I can tell at any point in time how much money I have in total, where it is, how much taxable and non-taxable interest I have and how my investments are doing.

Most of my transactions are done through online banking. Occasionally I use apps - for example for Tesco as their app is so much easier to use than their online banking.

Primrose

Colsten. 90 different accounts! My head hurts. That,a fine while you're young. Competent and on the ball. Have you ever considered what would happen if you had a serious accident and were unable to look after your affairs? I doubt whether anybody taking on a Power of Attoeney for you would know where to start or have the time to get to grips with that lot.. Youre obviously are good at it and enjoy having such a complex system but how much extra money does it make for you, and is it worth the effort?

boliston

I have everything on monthly dd - the only exception is service charges which have an annoying "pay over 10 months" direct debit and ground rent which has to be paid annually.

I use quickbooks to track everything and update it either daily or every other day.

All credit cards get paid by bacs as it takes about 5 minutes once a month after payday.

colsten

Primrose wrote: »

Colsten. 90 different accounts! My head hurts. That,a fine while you're young. Competent and on the ball. Have you ever considered what would happen if you had a serious accident and were unable to look after your affairs? I doubt whether anybody taking on a Power of Attoeney for you would know where to start or have the time to get to grips with that lot.. Youre obviously are good at it and enjoy having such a complex system but how much extra money does it make for you, and is it worth the effort?

I am not very young any longer, and it isn't very complex at all. It's all documented, and all up to date. If I get ill or pop my clogs, my partner will take over where I left. And should we both get taken out at the same time, there's yet someone else who would be ready to take it on - although we haven't yet get any POA with that person.

No_6

All done manually,, plus DD's ,,after grazing my MS money account.


PC's only,,, not available for, young phone thingy's things.

Going for 30 different accounts soon

share accounts are different

Yawn

I do everything by DD and SO except my credit card bill because it can be half my monthly salary and I'm paranoid about it getting me overdrawn. (It's an airline rewards card so there is a point to its existence.)

JuicyJesus

I do practically everything by DD and SO, with purchases either going on my debit card or my AmEx (settled in full by DD). I have a spreadsheet set up to calculate shares of joint bills, with my precise share being transferred into a joint bills account and my partner doing the same with her share. The spreadsheet also has a monthly budget and all spending categorised, and if given the available balances on bank accounts and the Amex lets me reconcile it and make sure everything is accounted for, which I do whenever anything changes. It also gives an indication of the state of my pension fund (again reconciled against the pension provider), works out the net salary from the gross after deducting pension contributions and share plan), works out any interest due on debts and plots things out up to the end of 2020. The only thing it doesn't include is a couple of current accounts which I don't use and are at a nil balance.

It might be overkill but there's no surprises this way; I've been doing it like this since at least 2007 and the current spreadsheet incarnation dates from about 2012. I tried GNUcash but found it completely inflexible and a nightmare to set up and plot things like recurring Direct Debits, credit cards which don't get paid in full each month etc.

Anthorn

Anything and everything that can be automated including savings.

Looking back into the mists of time I used to have an automatic two-way sweep of my current account and savings account. i.e. Sweep funds over a maximum in my current account to my savings account and sweep funds from my savings account to my current account when the current account balance drops to a minimum. The only account I know of which gets near to that is my "B" account but only one one sweep is allowed.