How to Automate Your Finances

Experiments

With my philosophy of automating/outsourcing the low value yielding activites in my life, moving money around was yet another target. In this highly integrated communictation age that we live in, having to manually move my money around from one account to aother and having to regularly keep up with the transactional issues concerning my finances meant I had less time I could spend on optimizing their allocation to maximize my returns. (A much higher yield for my time investment)

At the time I was banking with a typical brick and mortar bank and often found myself having to physically go to their branches for mindless transactions. I also had my money mindlessly sitting in their convenient checking accounts catching dust (technically losing value to inflation.) Not to mention mothly fees, and their lengthy T&C designed to ensure no one reads it past 3 pages.

Untill one day, when I wasted 4 hours trying to make some basic transcations. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. First of all, I designed a Wealth Map that gave the flow of my income some structure. I could now visualize where all my money was going and distribute my money around according to the % yield of each potential branch. I then looked to maximize each area where my money would reside.

​On that note, I made the move to digital banking for both my checking and savings accounts. Chose Charles Schwabb for their perks and transactional efficencies such as free international ATM services (Checking Account), CIT Bank for their market leading 1.55% APY (Savings Account) and Sychrony bank for the 2% APY (CD). (With online banks, make sure theyre FDIC insured) I also chose Vanguard for their low-cost ETFs and instruments. I also negotiated a 4% cash back credit card with Discover.

Either one of these things was already 100% better than the 0.01% APY I was earning at the time. After having all these variables in place, I set up online automations that allowed each account to communicate with eachother and began the automatic system that allocated my direct deposits down to each branch of my portfolio according to my risk propensity.

Results

- Was earning 155% more on my stationary money
- Had all accounts moving money around automatically
-Was building my credit score by connecting my recurring monthly payments to my CC
- I only had access to my money after my wealth automations had invested 20% of it
- Had an ETF that I was consistently contributing money into, without even thinking about it
- Any raise I got in my internship just meant me increasing the % of my investments
- Even my safety options (CD & Savings) were yielding 1.5-2% APY

There’s a lot more to it than I can possibly summarize in a few paragraphs, so reach out to me if you want to know more.

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