It’s freeing to have all my bills paid automatically. It’s a weight off my shoulders knowing that I have the money in my account and that I won’t miss a payment. The key for today, is to automate your finances.
Early last year, I wasn’t always on top of things and I fell behind. I was distracted, got super busy with work and I wasn’t taking good enough of care of myself. I wasn’t paying attention to my finances.
For over two months this was going on! I ended up being behind on my utility and power bills multiple times and missing the minimum payment on a credit card.
I’m usually REALLY on top of this stuff, so how did this happen?
Well, for one, I didn’t plan for this. My self-care was lacking. The stress of work and home life left me not eating right or exercising and filling my evenings with video games to distract myself.
I wasn’t myself, and my mental health was holding me back.
The other reason was that I didn’t have my life, namely my finances, on auto-pilot. Being FI-minded and trying to optimize different aspects of my finances, I didn’t want to auto-pay my bills from my main account. I wanted to score extra rewards points on my credit card and with PATM. The whole “aggregation of marginal gains” thing I try to employ. The idea that small changes add up over time.
I also thought that I would look at my bills each month and monitor my use. If I monitor my use, I’ll change my habits. But the review and changes never happened.
Here I am trying to optimize and maximize my savings, and I got messed up. The extra steps I needed to do each month were more hassle, and they ended up not getting done.
After this happened, it was a wake-up call. This might happen again, so I need to be better prepared.
My lapse could have had worse consequences. I ended up being lucky, as it didn’t affect my credit rating, and I had only minor late payment fees. It was time to toss PAYTM and put my bills on auto-pilot.(1)
It’s now months later, and it’s been really freeing. I don’t have to worry about missing my bills, having to login to my account, follow-up by looking at the invoice date and the payment due date, and check my account to see if I had already paid it. I just know it will come out of my account. No hassle.
Yeah, I’m “losing” that 1% but as somebody who struggles with mental health and distracted living every once in a while, it’s worth the peace of mind knowing if an episode catches me again, it’s one less thing to worry about.
Thanks for reading my story. Have you had a similar experience or have any tips to automate your finances? Leave me a note in the comments.
(1) I realize PAYTM can schedule bills. I found it didn’t work the way I wanted with my payees. Plus, the restrictions and fees on their allowed credit cards made it less than ideal. I had to use a secondary card that I rarely use and I missed paying it. PAYTM has since added more card types so I may revisit this again in the future.
I got rid of PayTM for different reasons. The value just was not there anymore to use it since the gift card option essentially got diminished to “You pay $9, we pay$ 1”, and it added an extra delay in getting my bills paid on time. I like how it’s a lot cleaner now – no middle man holding my money. And less time to get $ from one place to another. I do find if I have stress at work and/or home, all my efforts on maintaining my finances AND taking care of myself just kind of go out the window. It’s a hard nut to crack. I think automating bill payments IS a good thing where possible, however not everything can be automated. I guess it’s finding that balance or backup plan when life throws curveballs.
It’s definitely been a stressful year and hard to make healthy decisions with everything going on in the world! Losing 1% seems worth it just to have the peace of mind that everything is taken care of!
Hi Celene, thanks for the comment. Peace of mind is everything right now. Knowing things are taken care of allows me to focus on more important things like my family! 🙂