Monday, November 19, 2007

Stress Relief Tip: Get Your Finances on Auto-Pilot

The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy for me, so I went about ten days without looking at my finances. This is the longest I’ve gone without looking (and adjusting and obsessing) since my financial revolution. During those ten days, I kept thinking that I needed to look at my budget and my online bank balance to make sure that all of the bills were getting paid and that nothing odd was going on.

I was sure I’d have some sort of mess to clean up. I wasn’t even sure what that mess would be – maybe some bill was late (or close to it), or maybe there’d be a transaction error in my bank account. The thought was stressing me out more and more as the days went on, but I just didn’t have a second to sit down and take care of things.

When I finally got a chance to look, it turned out that there was really nothing for me to do. All of my bills are on auto pilot, so everything had been taking care of itself. All I did was check off a couple bills that had been paid and enter a grocery receipt. That was it!

It was a great feeling to know that I’ve gotten everything so streamlined that it can pretty much take care of itself without me for a few days. It’s always good to keep a close eye on things, but it’s nice to know that even when I’m not being very vigilant, things aren’t spiraling out of control. All it took was a little organization in the beginning, and now I can relax when I don’t have a chance to get to things for a few days.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How terrific is that! Feels great to know that you've set yourself up well so you don't have to be vigilant 24/7 when it comes to bill payments.

I've just posted about how all my bills are on automatic payment myself, it just one less thing to think about.