Fashion designer Tom Ford once said: "Time and silence are the most luxurious things today." He had a point too. Why waste time on your finances and admin tasks when they could be done in a smarter way and your time could be better spent elsewhere? Like freeing up time to do things that you enjoy?
As well as freeing up time, automation has the potential to save you late fees if you forget to pay a bill. Automating is modern money management at its finest.
When you automate your bills, you’re effectively setting up your payments to be paid automatically every week, fortnight or month; it’s like putting your money on autopilot.
With online banking and payment apps like RentPay, automation is not only possible but easy and can take as little as 10 minutes to set up. A few minutes invested in setting up schedules can save you time, late fees and stress over a year.
If it’s a bill or a financial goal, chances are you can automate it:
But first, remember this:
Top tip: Automate your energy bills with RentPay’s bill smoothing feature. Rather than paying in one big lump sum at the end of each quarter, you pay a smaller set amount towards your energy bill, which is calculated on your average usage.
Can you pay every bill on time without concern, or are you struggling with a couple of payments? Do you have reminders set up to avoid missing a payment? Do you frequently pay a couple of days late on some bills?
Automating some of your payments is a great tactic if you’re financially sound and can comfortably pay your bills each month. If you don’t always have enough money to cover your bills, hold off on automating for now.
Top tip: List out your monthly bills. Include the biller, the amount and the due date. Set up scheduled transfers between accounts to meet your goals.
Once you’ve worked out your regular bills, group them into a couple of categories: energy, household and insurance. Decide if you want to automate or manually manage that category.
Do you have credit card debt? These typically come with high late fees, so they’re a good candidate for automated repayments. Try to pay more than the minimum repayment and automate this amount to be transferred each payday.
The most effective way to handle this whole process is to have money automatically transferred from your everyday account the day after each payday. Doing this ensures you’ll have money available to transfer. The bonus? You can live off the remaining amount, knowing your future bills and loan repayments are covered. Remember, the schedule timing will depend on whether you’re paid weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
If you’re a RentPay customer, smoothing your gas and electricity bills into regular, automated payments is simple. We combine the timing of this with your rent payments to make it easier for you – that's one less thing to remember!
If you’re not already onboard, sign up to RentPay and set up bill smoothing. RentPay also takes care of your rental payments so you don’t have to.
For all other bills, log onto your online bank and schedule the amounts you want to be transferred from your everyday account. Simple!
Go one step further and have a set amount or percentage of your paycheck automatically sent to your emergency fund. By automating your savings transactions, this deposit will be made right away and you won’t need to worry about spending this money, forgetting to make a transfer or not having enough to contribute to these accounts.
A good tip is to understand when your bills are due, in relation to when you get paid. This will help ensure you have the funds available and you’ll avoid any late fees off the back of insufficient funds. No one wants an overdrawn account or bank fees! To keep your bills in check, create a budget calendar. It’s basically a budget in calendar form that will help you remember your due dates. Check with your service providers to see if they’ll let you choose your payment date.
A good practice worth having is to check your account statements each month in advance of your automatic bill payments. It’s worth popping in a calendar reminder every so often to review your bills and your budget.
Automating your finances might take a minute to set up, but it’s well worth the effort! Having everything set up means you’re far less likely to slip on your financial goals. Remember to set up direct deposits, automatic any savings and investments, create a budget, and schedule your payments in line with payday.
You might also like:
> Avoid budget blowouts with RentPay bill smoothing
> How to ace your RentPay game
> Point hacking: Earn rewards by paying your rent with a credit card on RentPay
