An automated money plan solves money stress – wait, what?
I don’t care what you’ve heard in the past (and we’ve all heard it!) budgets don’t work.
You can’t rely on a budget to solve your money worries, manage your money or build your wealth.
If a budget gets you ahead at all, it probably won’t be for long. If you want to really get a handle on your financial management you need to toss out the budget and create an automated money plan instead.
What’s the biggest problem with your budget? YOU are.
That’s right. No matter how perfect your spreadsheet formulas or how detailed those expense and savings projections are there’s still a major problem with your budget….you.
Here’s why…
Living inside your head is the Smart Money You and the Bad Money You.
These two are always at war over your budget and money; each battling it out to get their own way.
The Smart Money You is the usually the one who gets all motivated and draws up the perfect (yet unrealistic) budget and promises this time it’s gonna work.
Smart Money You is focused on financial freedom and whipping your money management skills into tip-top shape.
Meanwhile, Bad Money You kinda just wants to live for the moment, is lazy and thinks sorting out your financial life is just too damn hard.
It’s Bad Money You that whispers these kinds of things in your ear…
“Buy this, forget the budget, this is too hard (cos it kinda is!) YOLO, you deserve it, everyone else is in debt, start next week….”
So the Smart Money You battles to keep on track…staying strong for maybe a few weeks or even a few months.
But it’s exhausting. Tracking every dollar, epic spreadsheets, no wiggle room and constantly fending off the temptation from Bad Money You to derail the whole thing.
It’s not surprising when it all eventually comes crashing down and you’re left feeling discouraged and think;
“Screw this, I’m done with the budget!”
Which is often followed by a spending binge, because you figure, eh, why not, this budget thing didn’t work anyway.
It’s high fives all round for Bad Money You.
Then Smart Money You feels even more guilty about the spending spree and commits to trying to budget all over again! What a vicious cycle to get stuck in.
The challenge of trying to stick with a strict, unrealistic diet has often been compared to trying to follow a ‘to the dollar’ budget – and I couldn’t agree more.
There’s a better way! Create an automated money plan
Putting your money on autopilot is the answer for overcoming budget frustrations, lazy money management and spending temptations.
Having an automated plan for your money means taking the biggest budget problem out of the equation – you.
There’s no more Smart Money You and Bad Money You battling it out to decide where your money goes.
Everything just happens automatically. Woosh!
(That’s the sound of your paycheck being divided up and sent exactly where it needs to go….without you doing a thing!)
When you get rid of needless complexity from your financial life and automate it as much as possible you make it so much easier to win at the money game.
A budget doesn’t DO anything but an automated plan takes ACTION
What’s the big, game-changing difference between having a budget vs an automated money plan? ACTION.
See, a budget doesn’t actually do anything with your money. It just sits there on paper or in a spreadsheet as a reminder of what you ‘should’ do.
It leaves the ‘doing’ part up to you. This means results are gonna vary wildly depending on who’s in charge that day, week or month – The Smart Money You or The Bad Money You?
On the other hand, an automated money plan puts everything in motion for you.
Once you’ve set it all up, your plan takes action on your behalf.
Your money plan automatically allocates the places your money needs to go to support your financial goals. No willpower required, and we know that willpower doesn’t work in the long term.
By setting up various bank accounts and transfers to cover expenses, spending, debt reduction, saving and investing you know EVERYTHING is covered.
Having an automated money plan lifts a big burden off your shoulders by minimising decision making. It cuts out the constant back and forth between Smart Money You and Bad Money You.
Automating the NUMBER #1 RULE for wealth creation will change your life
“Start thy purse to fattening” – The Richest Man In Babylon, George Samuel Clason
It’s the golden rule of wealth creation – pay yourself first.
When savings and investing (aka – paying yourself first) happen on autopilot, there isn’t surplus cash lying around for you to be tempted by Bad Money You to spend.
Meanwhile, you can happily spend the money you have allocated to your discretionary spending account without tracking every expense to the dollar.
Ready to automate your financial life for success?
I hope so! Automating your finances is a game-changer, my friend…especially if there’s a little more Bad Money You in the mix than Smart Money You. Don’t worry, we’ve all got some of both!
I step you through how to get started with automation here and take things even further in my 5 Steps To Financial Freedom program.
As part of the program, you receive a copy of my money planner plus a short course on how to use it.
Whether you get started automating finances on your own or with my help, please just get started.
You’ll be amazed at how automation can transform your financial life in an incredibly short space of time.
Let me know in the comments if you’re committing to set up an automated plan for your money OR if it’s something you already do?
This is awesome Dave, you have been such a great student and made massive progress in the last 12 months. Excited to see what you achieve over the coming months and years. Congratulations on getting rid of money stress in such a simple but effective manner. 🙂
This is so true for years I didn’t want to automate because I thought i wouldn’t be in control of my money, I thought I could do it every payday by my self, that is sooo stressful. I automated about 12mths ago and WOW what a change it made the amount of stress that I didn’t have on me was amazing, I didn’t realise how stressful it really was until I automated. I don’t budget, I money plan now, the word budget sounds to restricting.