How I Automate My Finances

🧐 Watch a full-length (47 minutes) companion video to this on on Nebula, where I go through my entire budgeting/financial planning process and custom spreadsheet template: curiositystream.com/thomas 📱Here's my budgeting spreadsheet template: thomasjfrank.com/free-budgeting-spreadsheet-templa… 🖊 Quote of the week: “It is not hard to make money in the market. What is hard to avoid is the alluring temptation to throw your money away on short, get-rich-quick speculative binges. It is an obvious lesson, but one frequently ignored.” - Burton G. Malkiel, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" 👈yet another great reason to automate your finan

One thing that I did that helped immensely (which I learned from another finance YouTube video), is call and have the due date for my cell phone bill, my utilities, and all my credit cards moved to the 1st of the month. So you only have to check and track money going out of your account on one day. It makes managing your bill payments sooo much easier.

Great video. I'm 65 years old and have been following this basic plan for my entire life. Back in the day I wrote out the checks and dropped them in the mail. Setting up an automatic payment for your monthly expenses not only makes sure you pay on time but also gives you a clear insight into what you are spending if you are not doing a budget. This approach has saved me many times when life interfered with paying attention to my bills. And believe me, life will get in the way, and automation takes one more worry off the table. If you set it up to pay a little more than your typical utility bill, if you don't have time to review at least the bill is paid. And guess what, the next month the overpayment is deducted from your bill.

One thing i started doing for peace of mind really was making my auto investments happen on a pay day. Having to pay rent and utility bills in the first week AND see my investment money leave the account for my bank account down to some low balances and having the floating room for a paycheck so that my balance quite literally stays close to the same is super satisfying

I feel like you and I would get along great in real life! This is how I run my stuff as well, great job.

Another tip (that I sadly figured out about 20 years into adulthood) is to call your credit card companies and get them all on the same pay date. All of my CCs are due on the 15th. It makes it easy for me to remember when it’s due.

Very insighful, thank you so much for your help 🙏🏻

This personal finance tech tree is an amazing idea!

Last part is very true. I would definitely still monitor my autopay bills or have it setup to send me notifications when a bill is paid. Worked in telco and i've seen several people randomly get bills that are 100x their usual bills due to billing errors. I've also had a similar bill from my power company that I've disputed and got back $300. After you reach a certain amount in savings these amounts can fly under the radar.

I wasn’t financial free until my 30’s and I’m still in my 30’s, bought my second house already, earn on a monthly through passive income and got 4 out of 5 goals, just hope it encourages someone that it doesn’t matter if you don’t have any of them right now, you can start TODAY regardless your age INVEST and change your future! Investing is a grand choice I made. Great video! Thanks for sharing! Very inspiring! I love this

Thomas is like the older brother that every late millennial or gen z needs in their life...

awesome tips, Frank! thanks for sharing

Who needs a version 2.0 of this one! 🙌

Love the idea of the tech map.. I want to do that for so many things now

Great video. I'm a tech guy so I was hoping the "automate" part was going to be more than just "set up automatic payments / transfers". But still great advice overall!

This is the video i needed to see to know i am on the right track.

we actually already have this integrated in our banks native app in Norway. Nice video! :D

Very interesting topic, thanks!

In my humble opinion, the most important step in personal finance is to read the book "Millionaire Next Door". It's a real eye opener.

Nice! I am on the right track. I am already automating investments and bills. I need to look into credit card rewards. Thank you 🙏🏿