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- How to set up your money system: automate and chill
How to set up your money system: automate and chill
Miranda Merten
January 19, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
Money, like emotions, is something you must control to keep your life on the right track.
Est. reading time: 7 min
Ya’ll! What in the frozen tundra happened this week?? Was it as cold where you are as it was for me? When it gets in the teens in Atlanta, we all go batshit crazy. Schools close—even when there’s no snow—and everyone complains. It’s always a fun time to see the social media breakdowns … and I think I’ll be staying in my house until this passes, lol.
Let's get into it...
🖥️ Setting an automatic system for paying yourself
Let’s talk about money, shall we?
Multiple bank accounts.
Too many spreadsheets.
Apps that you don’t even use anymore.
The number of things we use to manage money can be ridiculous. Bouncing from one thing to the other to find something that “fits”, but nothing ever seems to.
My opinion—don’t make it so complicated.
And … automate it.
The easiest way to manage your finances, pay yourself, and pay everyone else is to automate your system.
Just like you’re always looking for ways to automate your projects, client onboarding, social media … automate your finances.
The first step is to automate as many of your client payments as possible. Get them all on a payment structure that will charge them without them having to do it manually. If they have to pay their invoice manually every month, that is one extra piece of friction in your process.
I use Wave Accounting to invoice my retainer clients, and each of them have approved automatic payments for their invoices. That means on the first of the month, Wave creates the recurring invoice, charges their card, and then emails them their receipt.
If I have random projects, I just bill those manually and figure out where to put the money.
The next thing is to have your income, savings, and taxes automatically draft out into separate accounts.
I have a few different bank accounts, and they all serve different purposes. When all of my money lands in my business bank account (SoFi), it automatically transfers money where I told it to via their “autopilot” feature.
SoFi has a “Vaults” feature where you can save money in different category buckets and one of my savings buckets is Taxes. So the taxes automatically go into that vault until my quarterly tax payment comes out (also automatically).
I have savings accounts in Wealthfront (current interest is 5.00% APY). They have a neat forecasting tool that shows you how much you’ll have by retirement if you stay on the right track. And they also offer investing—which I’m not using yet but I plan to.
You also want to send your “paycheck” somewhere right? You don’t want to keep your business expenses and personal expenses co-mingled. Send the amount you want for your paycheck to your personal bank account. This covers all of your other regular expenses, like household and fun money.
I also do this step a little differently now. My personal bank account is at Charles Schwab, but because I’m in a season where I’m really intentional about how I spend my money, I’m using my Qube Money account to split everything into buckets (automatically), and then everything gets paid from their respective bucket.
Yes, of course my bill payments are also automatic.
If you’re interested in my breakdown of how I do my Qube Money buckets, let me know and I’ll do an email about that.
Lastly, I have a Charles Schwab account for my SEP IRA that automatically gets a little money as well.
That is how I automate my money to pay myself and everything else. I love having my money move for me because I know each bucket gets what it needs before I unknowingly spend something I shouldn’t.
The biggest hurdle people have with something like this is usually the setup (like every system), so it will take a while to figure out how you want to structure it but once you do, your finances become so much easier to manage.
What do you think? See if there is a portion of your money journey that makes sense automating and let me know how it goes.
☕️ Simmer on this tip: Weekly digital decluttering
Regularly declutter your digital workspace, including your email inbox, files, and apps. Set aside a specific time each week to archive, delete, or organize digital clutter. A clean digital environment reduces distractions and helps you find important information faster.
❤️🔥 Hot finds this week
1. IMPORTANT - Confused by Google's email updates? Time is almost up. I’m sure you’ve heard about this, because every email service provider is out there scaring all of us with talk of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC (WTF?). If you’ve never heard of these things, it can be kind of scary, but my girl Cheryl Rerick has created a free webinar to explain it all and if you already know you need help, a paid workshop to get you caught up to speed. If you depend on email in your business and are not yet compliant, you should know that February 1st is the deadline (says Google) or your emails will be hitting a lot more spam boxes (or blocked altogether). Don’t forget … If you manage your client’s email marketing, they might be looking to you to help them be compliant!
2. How to get people to actually sign up for your Freebie. A workshop for online coaches & service providers. Learn the top 3 secrets to get people to pay attention to your freebie and actually sign up for it. January 24th @ 2PM ET.
3. Your guide to boosting engagement with DM marketing. Not sure where to start with DM marketing? Plann is running you through why your direct messages are key to boosting engagement, along with their top best practice tips and tricks to maximize DM marketing in 2024 (and beyond).
📚 Can you relate? Small-town love story and a dark romance
I have been on a reading kick lately—probably has something to do with my new reading tracker and the new year—and I’m looking for your best book recommendations of what you’ve been reading. I’m really into fiction and definitely something with a love story. Right now I’m reading The Long Game, Elena Armas and Corrupt, Penelope Douglas. They couldn’t be more different than each other. The Long Game is super cute and funny, a las romcom, and Corrupt is a steamy, dark romance. So yeah, I’m basically down for whatever, so send me your recommendations!
🎙️ 5 things you can do other than make new years resolutions
What kinds of New Year’s resolutions have you made for the upcoming year? National quitter’s day was last week (the day about 80% of people have already given up on their resolutions), but if you’re still going strong or looking for something else to do, take a listen to this quick throwback episode for alternatives to the standard health and fitness options.
Also, this week I dropped a new member’s only private podcast episode on how to automate the process of organizing and paying your quarterly taxes. If you want to tune into that episode (plus get access to other benefits), you can upgrade your perks here!
Until next time,
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