5 Easy Ways to Automate Your Finances

There’s no denying that the average modern lifestyle is a busy one. Between the increasing demands of work, long morning and evening commutes, managing a household, and kids that need to be driven to activities and helped with homework, most adults have little time left over to catch forty winks, much less attend to financial concerns.

Luckily, advances in technology have made it easier than ever to automate your finances and take one thing off your plate. Here are a few easy options to explore when you decide it’s high time you automated your finances.

1. Direct Deposit

This is a no-brainer. Most companies prefer to use direct deposit rather than spending the money to print paper checks for their employees. So if your employer offers this option, take the opportunity to gain access to your pay even faster each month while also saving yourself a trip to the bank. If your employer doesn’t offer direct deposit, do some research and present a proposal detailing why it’s beneficial for businesses and employees alike.

2. Automatic Transfers

Online banking has made it easy to log in to your bank accounts and move around money whichever way you like. However, if you find yourself making the same transfers over and over again, there’s no reason not to take advantage of automatic transfers offered through your bank. You could move money from checking to savings, make transfers to Roth IRAs or other retirement accounts, and generally automate this aspect of money management to save yourself time and hassle each month.

3. Online Bill Pay

If you’ve already gone paperless with your billing it’s no great leap to set up automatic bill pay. You can decide when money is withdrawn from your account and how much is taken each month for various bills.

This might not work for bills like utilities that vary from month to month, but even credit card payments can be automated to a degree. Just check with a Compass Bank online account representative to see what options are offered.

4. Budget Tracking Tools

Keeping track of a budget can be a major time suck. Luckily, there’s an app for that. Tools like Mint and LearnVest are designed to help you keep track of your finances with easy-access reports and the ability to set up alerts when you’re overspending or when strange activity is happening in your accounts. Utilizing such tools could significantly reduce the amount of time you spend working on your budget each month.

5. Consider Prepaid Debit Cards

Everyone likes to have a little fun money, but you might not want to use your credit card for this purpose, especially if you’re prone to spending without paying attention and then stressing out when your credit card bill arrives. For similar reasons you might not want to use your bank debit card and wind up without sufficient funds to pay your bills. If analyzing your finances proves that you can’t be trusted to spend wisely, consider automating the process with a prepaid debit card. Some can be set up so that a set amount of money from every paycheck is transferred to the card. When you run out of money, you know you’re done with frivolous spending for the month.