7 simple ways to put your finances on autopilot

Juggling everyday responsibilities is challenging enough without having to stay on top of every bill, savings transfer, and budget check. Fortunately, taking control of your finances doesn’t have to be time-consuming.

By automating a few key tasks, you can make managing your money simpler, reduce the chance of missed payments, and stay on track with your financial goals without the constant effort.

To find out where to start, we spoke to Zoe Brett, financial planner at EQ Investors, who explained a few key benefits of putting some of your finances on autopilot and shared seven tedious admin tasks that you can automate today.

What are the benefits of putting some of your finances on autopilot?

Automation is particularly useful for saving and budgeting.

“Putting some of your pay check on autopilot by funnelling it into a spending account and having automated payments for your savings, investments and bills helps ensure everything that needs to be paid is paid,” says Brett.

Over a long-term period, it can help put you in a more financially stable position.

“Your savings and investments will gradually build up through these small automations, and will help improve your wealth overall in the long term,” says Brett.

She adds that these automatic processes can also help prevent decision fatigue.

“If you can build automation into things, then it’s one less thing you’ve got to think about amongst all the school runs, work and anything else that’s on your mind,” says Brett.

“As humans we can get a bit decision fatigued and having to consciously make decisions about your finances every single month, even if it’s a simple decision, can get a bit overwhelming.

“However, if you just automate it, it takes the decision process out of it for you and becomes a habit that you don’t have to think about.”

Here are seven ways to put your money on autopilot today…

1. Spending

“Having some of your pay check automatically go into a spending account as soon as you get paid is a big thing you can do,” says Brett. “This will help separate your needs from your wants, and that’s a really important first step.”

2. Bills

“Bills often come out at different times of the month, and monitoring that to make sure that there’s enough money left in your account to pay for everything can be really stressful,” says Brett.

“However, if all your bills are automated then you don’t have to worry about missing a payment.”

3. Emergency fund

“If you’re building an emergency fund, automating savings into this every month is a really good idea,” recommends Brett.

4. Lump expenditures

“If you have some lump-sum expenditures that you need to save for, such as Christmas or a big summer holiday, setting up different pots for each of these can be helpful because you can automate a fixed amount of money to go into each pot every month,” says Brett.

“This prevents these bigger expenses from being thrust upon you and breaks them down into smaller, more manageable, amounts instead.”

5. Investments

Automating your investment plan puts your wealth accumulation on autopilot – although there are risks associated with investing your money due to its unpredictable nature.

“This takes the worry out of timing the market because that money will just go in every month and you will then benefit from the pound cost averaging,” says Brett.

6. Money round-up features

Many digital banks and financial technology apps offer automatic spending round-up features to help users build a financial cushion without altering their daily spending habits.

“What happens is that every time you spend money, it will round it up to the nearest pound and will funnel that extra money into a savings account,” explains Brett.

“This is a great automated process that gradually builds up savings for you.”

7. Automate any pay rises

To stop lifestyle inflation from eating up your pay rises, immediately divert a fixed percentage of any raise into a dedicated savings or investment account.

“When you get a pay rise, before you get used to that money it can helpful to automate some of it into savings or investments because that’s a really good way of building wealth before you’ve even felt the benefit of the increased money,” suggests Brett.

How to start:

Most banking apps will have a level of this automation already built in.

“It doesn’t need to be anything super fancy or technical, you could just start by setting up a common standing order for each of these areas,” suggests Brett.

If you are not confident at using these apps, pick up the phone.

“Most banks provide a telephone banking service so you should be able to set a standing order up over the phone if you’re not comfortable with tech,” says Brett.

“Somebody in a call centre should be able to talk you through how to set it up or do it for you over the phone.”