How to Automate Your Finances (Money on Autopilot!)

Get the Free Automation Checklist⁠ here. Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom. 👉 Join Master Money Academy today! In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, Andrew reveals how to automate your entire financial life so your money works for you while you live your life. He shares practical steps to build your flow-through account, automate your wealth and bills, create a spending plan using the 20-55-25 rule, build safety nets with emergency funds, and run a simple 10-minute monthly review. Listen to The Business Show here. Partner Deals Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Get 50% Off Monarch Money, the all-in-one financial tool at www.monarchmoney.com/PFP Acorns: Start investing automatically with Acorns and get a $5 bonus at Acorns.com/PFP Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ DELL: Get a new Dell AI PC starting at $749.99, at Dell.com/ai-pc. Policy Genius: Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Wayfair: Shop outdoor furniture, grills, lawn games, and WAY more for WAY less DeleteMe: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ and Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off! Links of he Episodes Mentioned The Ultimate Guide to the HSA (The Super Retirement Account!) How to Master Credit Cards (and Beat The Banks!) The Bucket Method For Managing Your Savings (Master Multiple Savings Goals) Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI Website Builder. I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

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• 1:29Andrew Giancola?

  or piece of content that we record. And that's one of the things that I love about Wayfair. You can shop thousands of products across different styles and budgets, use customer photos and reviews to see how things actually look in real homes, and find something that fits your space. They also have Wayfair Verified Products that are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection. And with more than 20 million verified 5-star reviews, you can feel a lot more confident about what you're ordering. I've used Wayfair for this studio and our home, and I absolutely recommend them for your space. So transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5% back on every single purchase.

• 2:14Andrew Giancola?

  Head to wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair: Every Style, Every Home.

• 2:28Andrew Giancola?

  On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, how to automate your money so it runs on autopilot.

• 2:53Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of mastermoney.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be diving into a much requested episode about how to automate your money. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money Newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter and don't forget to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, most people, they think they're bad with money. But what most people don't realize is you are not bad with money.

• 3:36Andrew Giancola?

  It is not you, it's that you don't have a system in place that is going to allow you to build wealth. And in today's episode, my entire goal is to teach you the money on autopilot system. This is our system on how we completely automate our money. Now, in Master Money Academy, we have a bunch of people who started to automate their money and they cannot believe how much less they have to do with their finances just by automating their money. And once you get your dollars working on autopilot, it is incredible how much faster you will build wealth. Why? There's a number of different reasons that we're going to talk about in this episode, but I am really, really excited for you guys to learn how to automate your money. Once I started to learn how to automate my money very early on in my finance journey,

• 4:21Andrew Giancola?

  all of a sudden, everything became easier. I was spending less time thinking about, did that transfer over to that account? I was spending less time thinking about my bills. I wasn't worried anymore on if my dollars were getting invested, or if my bills were getting paid, or if I was saving enough money in my emergency fund. I knew. How much was going to those accounts every single month? And the beautiful part about this was I didn't have to do anything. So all you have to do is set up your automation system early. And once you have that set up, then we're going to talk about some things that you can do after to just make sure it is running smoothly. But automation is how you spend less time on your finances and more time on the things that you actually value. Spending time with your family, spending more time earning more money so that you can take those extra dollars

• 5:06Andrew Giancola?

  and put them towards future you. This is really where I want you prioritizing your time is spending more on the bigger financial decisions. I don't want you in every single budget category, having to worry about every single cent and dollar. No, instead I want you to automate your money. So you can think about the big decisions, your taxes, where you're going to be living, how you're going to be allocating your investments, how are you going to be thinking about earning more money, negotiating your salary, those are the big ticket items that I really want you to think about. And so you can go through this entire process. And a lot of people, once they start to see money automation, they say to themselves, holy crap, I could automate literally almost everything. And a lot of people will come back to me and say, oh my gosh, I've been making my finances way too hard. This is so much better overall.

• 5:50Andrew Giancola?

  And you can get all of this done pretty quickly, actually, over the course of one weekend, if you actually buckle down and set this up. Now, we're going to have a free automation checklist that you can download in the show notes down below. So make sure you check that out because that checklist is a free printable downloadable checklist that is available to each and every single one of you. So again, we will have that linked up down below in the show notes. Also, at the end of this episode, I'm going to give you some screenshots. We're going to try something new here. So if you're watching on Spotify or YouTube, I'm going to give you some screenshots that you can utilize and screenshot on your phone. And so you have some extra things to consider. And it's also going to give you a list of items that you should be automating first. So the 12 things that you should automate first, I'm going to have that at the end of this episode

• 6:33Andrew Giancola?

  so that you can just screenshot it and take it with you and take some action right away at the end of the episode. All right, so if you're ready to automate your money, if you're ready to dive in deeper, without further ado, let's get into it.

• 6:46Andrew Giancola?

  So the biggest thing I want everybody to realize today is that automation is a superpower. So your biggest problem isn't your income, it's chaos. Your finances, most likely, if you're new to automation, are chaotic. Or you're just spending a lot of time in your finances. Bills are coming out of three different accounts. That is one thing I see a lot of people do, where they have multiple accounts and just overcomplicate their finances. Random charges are hitting at random time and you have no idea when that is actually going to happen. You're trying to pay some of these bills manually. Some of your bills are on auto pay, but a lot of them you are paying manually. Maybe you're even sending out checks if you're on 1995 still. You're trying to remember when daycare hits. You're trying to remember when the next phone bill is going to hit. You're trying to remember when your mortgage hits and you can't keep it all straight.

• 7:31Andrew Giancola?

  Then you have to transfer money for groceries and then you have to transfer money for items that you forgot to remember. All of this is complete financial chaos. And automation removes all of this. It removes those late fees. It removes those money fights with your spouse where you're going back and forth because you forgot to have enough cash on hand in order to pay the electric bill. It removes the missed investments and the big opportunities that you're missing out on because you did not automate your investments. It removes the emotional decision making. So where you're thinking about, man, should I invest these dollars or should I go, you know, treat myself? Should I go splurge a little bit? No, it removes that from your equation because you know exactly what you're going to be doing. We're going to set up a plan that allows you to transfer those dollars. It removes guilt. It removes overwhelm. All of these things are why I absolutely love automation.

• 8:16Andrew Giancola?

  And if you are someone out there, most people hate this word. And when I say this word, I see a lot of people cringe. It removes the need to always have to budget. The B word is something most people don't like. Now, there's going to be seasons where you're always going to have to budget. If you are in a season of life where maybe you lost a job. Well, if you lost a job, you're going to have to budget because you didn't even know where every single dollar was going. But once you get this automation set up and once you get this system in place, you have to budget way less, if not at all, depending on what your income is and how much room you have. And then it also just eliminates procrastination, which most of us are guilty of when it comes to our finances. Included and so removing procrastination from your equation is really, really important.

• 9:00Andrew Giancola?

  Now here's the big thing is willpower is something that is finite, meaning willpower is going to dissolve. It is going to go away. We cannot rely on our willpower. We must rely on our discipline. And so when this happens, most people, when it comes to their finances are trying as hard as they can to rely on their willpower. And it's impossible. It is absolutely impossible to rely on that. If I relied on my willpower, I would never be where I am today. Automation changes that for you and you only have to set it up once. So let's dive deeper into what we need to do. Now I'm going to talk about the first thing you need to do, because we have six steps in this episode that I'm going to talk about. The checklist that we have for you to download is going to break it down even more. But in these six steps, we're going to go through all of these. So we're going to build our flow account where our money is going to pass through and flow through.

• 9:44Andrew Giancola?

  We're going to automate our wealth. We're going to automate our bills. We're going to go through a spending plan and we're going to automate some safety nets as well. So that we can preserve some of our wealth as we go through this. And then lastly, at the end, I'm going to give you the 10 minute monthly review that you need to be doing. In order to make sure that your automations are running correctly. So let's get into step one next. So step one is we're going to build our flow through account. So most of you have a flow through account and you just didn't know that that's what we're going to call this today. But this is where everything starts. Every single one of your dollars needs to flow through this account. So it can go towards the proper automations. Now, what is this account called? It's called a checking account and every single one of you has a checking account. But I want you to train your brain to reframe what the checking account is.

• 10:29Andrew Giancola?

  All this account is, is a place for your money to flow. So your paycheck is going to hit that checking account and it's going to flow and trickle down to all these other places. This is why typically I keep my checking account pretty lean. The max I tell most people in Master Money Academy to ensure they have in their checking account. It's right around a month's worth of expenses, max. You can have a month and a half if you really want to, if that makes you nervous. It depends on your personal preference, but I don't want you to have more than that in your checking account. Now, some of you may be saying, man, I'm just trying to get by. I barely have enough money in my checking account and others may be saying. Well, I have a hundred thousand dollars in my checking account. Why do I have so much? Let's talk about this.

• 11:10Andrew Giancola?

  You need to make sure that you're running this thing lean because we want to optimize where our dollars are going. We want to put them in the best possible places. And in order to do that, it needs to flow out of our checking account. A checking account is a terrible place to hold your money. Unless you have a high interest checking account, you really don't earn any money in your checking account. And a lot of times it gets commingled in there and people just end up spending those dollars that are already in their checking account. Most of you are listening right now, nodding your head, noting that a lot of times if you have money in your checking account, you know, hey, I go on those target runs and I spend that money. Or hey, I just went over to Dick's Sporting Goods and bought myself a brand new driver because I had enough money in my checking account. That's what happens to a lot of people. And instead, what you need to make sure that you are doing is moving that money into places that it needs to go.

• 11:54Andrew Giancola?

  So I like having around a month, a month is going to give you enough buffer where anything could happen. And you still have enough cash on hand in your checking account. If you want to run it leaner, if you're really on top of your finances, you absolutely can. But you got to make sure that there's no surprises and nothing jumps out at you. So this is where all your income lands and this is where all your automations are going to flow from. So you can think of your money automation system as a waterfall. This is the top of the waterfall before everything kind of flows down and trickles down into all the other places. It's going to pull some of your bills. It's going to pull some of your transfers and flow through all of those different areas. So it's not scattered across a bunch of different accounts. Now, if you're a couple or you're in a relationship, then finding ways to build up, even if you keep your finances separate.

• 12:38Andrew Giancola?

  Now, I'm a big proponent of having combined finances, but some people just do not want to do that. And it's personal preference. If you don't want to do that, whatever your reason is, personal finance is personal. And so if you do not want to have combined finances, what I would say is at least have a combined checking account where you transfer your bill payments into that one combined checking account. Because this is going to allow you to ensure that you can at least get your bills paid together. So you're not Venmo-ing each other back and forth. Money automation doesn't work when you are Venmo-ing your spouse back and forth. And so I want you to make sure that instead you have your either finances combined, number one. And or if you don't want to do that, you at least have a combined checking account. That you pay your bills out of. Got it? Perfect. So that's what we're going to talk through here. We don't want any more chaos in our life.

• 13:21Andrew Giancola?

  And so this pastor account is going to be the starting point. Now, where do I have a checking account? You can go to your local brick and mortar bank if you want to. Mine's at Chase, just because it's the closest bank to my house. That's literally the only reason I am not a big proponent of brick and mortar banks. Credit unions are also great, but I want ease of access. That's the only reason why I have it at Chase, because if I have to go get cash for something, or if I just have to make a deposit really quickly, I can do it and it's close. Because I know it's going to take me an extra week if the bank is farther away. And so that's the reason why I keep mine at Chase. But you can keep yours wherever you want to. It's all up to you. Now, step two is we are going to be talking about the most important thing that we can do with our dollars. And what is that? We can find a place to grow our wealth.

• 14:05Andrew Giancola?

  And so when we do this, we want to automate our money, automate our wealth. So we don't have to think about it anymore. Now, my friends, we are living in the 2020s right now. Meaning that we have a beautiful thing available to us that allows us to automatically build wealth without even having to think about it. And so I'm going to talk about this today, but you need to make sure that you are automating your investments. So your investments are the number one way to build wealth. It is the only way that you will ever be able to retire. And so you gotta make sure that you are automatically investing every week, every month, bi-monthly, whenever you set up the cadence. And so the cool thing about this is, is we're going to talk about this, but you can set up automatic transfers to Vanguard or Fidelity, and you can automatically invest.

• 14:48Andrew Giancola?

  In fact, Fidelity has been able to do this for a while, and Vanguard is now able to do this, where you can literally automatically invest directly from your checking accounts into your brokerage accounts or whatever other retirement accounts that you have set up. So you don't even have to think about buying the investment. Instead, you can automatically buy investments directly from your checking account. And so here's the thing I want you to think about. When money hits my checking account, I want to pay myself first. You always pay yourself first, then spend what is left over. And so we want to make sure our dollars are getting invested and paying ourselves first. This is why this is the most important step. And the first thing That you need to be doing. Now you may be saying to yourself, well, which order should I be automating my money? Well, I'm glad you asked, and it depends on each and every

• 15:32Andrew Giancola?

  single person. But here is the order of operations of how I would think about automating my dollars. Number one is getting your employer match. We know your employer match is free money. And every single person out there, if you are not getting your employer match, you need to make sure that you are getting it. Go to your HR department, look at your employee handbook and see what your match is. Take advantage of your employer match. It is free money. I love free money. I don't know about you, but I love free money. In fact, free is my favorite number. And so because of this, we want to make sure that we are getting that free money from our employer. They're trying to help you out there. And in fact, if you get your employer match every single year, even if it's a modest 2% to 3%, it will change your retirement over the course of 30 years by well over six figures. And I've seen a

• 16:14Andrew Giancola?

  lot of times, if the match is higher, you can have a million dollar difference in your portfolio, just by getting that employer match. You've got to make sure that you are getting it if you are not already. Number two is if you have a high deductible health plan, you could take advantage of the HSA. So the HSA has triple tax advantages. And I like using it as a retirement account. So money goes in tax free, it can grow tax free, and you could pull the money out tax free, as long as you have a qualified medical expense. We will link down below in the show notes, our entire episode about the HSA, because this is a really powerful account that you need to take advantage of. Number three is the Roth IRA. So for a lot of folks out there, the Roth IRA, or a traditional IRA, if you're

• 16:54Andrew Giancola?

  going to do a backdoor Roth IRA, is a fantastic account for most people. Why? Because money goes in, that's already been taxed. So your paycheck was already taxed, it grows tax free, and you could pull the money out tax free. Number four is your 401k. So your 401k, typically, the money from your 401k is going to go from your paycheck. So you don't even have to move it from your checking account. It's going to come from your paycheck already. So how many of you out there have a 401k, and you went and never looked at it? Because you didn't think about your finances, and maybe you were working throughout your 20s, and somebody told you, maybe an uncle, maybe your parents told you, hey, you got to contribute to your 401k and make sure you're getting some dollars in there. And so you start to invest your money in your 401k, but you didn't look at it. You just let those dollars go into your 401k and get invested and it grew over time.

• 17:39Andrew Giancola?

  And all of a sudden you opened up your 401k and you said, holy cow, I got way more money in there than I ever thought I did. Welcome to the magic of automation. This is what money automation does. It allows you to build wealth without having to think about it. And your 401k is the clear example that most of you have experienced that allows you to automate your money and build wealth automatically. I can't stress this enough. This is a really, really important step that most people need to note. And so your 401k is a great example. And that would be number four. Number five is your taxable account. So for most people out there, and I am starting to prioritize a taxable more and more and more because of flexibility. This is by far the most flexible account that you have out there. And so for people who want to retire

• 18:20Andrew Giancola?

  early, a lot of my audience does, for people who want to go out there and have additional flexibility when they retire, the taxable account is absolutely fantastic for that. And we probably need to do an updated deep dive on the taxable account and some of the cool things that you can do with it now in the next coming year, because there's some new laws and updates that allow this to be even a more tax advantaged account. And then number six is any other goals that you have a 529 plan for your kids, maybe your kids investing accounts. Those are going to be the things that are last. Those come at the end. And the reason for that is you need to take care of your retirement first, and then everything else comes into play. Too many people out there, I'm seeing, there are way too many people out there that I am seeing investing in a 529 before their retirement. Do not do that. I know you want to put your kids

• 19:05Andrew Giancola?

  first. I get it. But guess what? You're going to be a huge burden to your kids when you need long-term care, or you need some help, and they have to financially support you and your long-term care, because you did not put a retirement plan in place. You do not want to be a burden to your kids. You got to make sure that you contribute to your retirement first, then your kids come next. Understand, this is very, very important. There are no loans for retirement. And so you got to make sure that your retirement comes first before everything else. Now, step three, we're going to talk about those pesky things that none of us like to pay, which is our bills. So if you've been listening to this show for a while, you know it's not just me anymore. It takes a great team behind the scenes to make everything happen. And if I had to hire someone tomorrow,

• 19:50Andrew Giancola?

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• 20:33Andrew Giancola?

  this is the job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before. And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius.

• 21:18Andrew Giancola?

  See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions, and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies, starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see

• 22:03Andrew Giancola?

  how much you can save. That's PolicyGenius.com. If you've heard any recent episode of Health Corner, you know that I have spent the last few years trying to optimize my sleep. I've tried sleep trackers, cooling my room, changing my nighttime routine, all the different things, but nothing really matters as much as having the right mattress. And that's one of the reasons I love Leesa. A great mattress is one of those things that you use every single night and you spend a third of your life sleeping. And it can make a huge difference on how you feel the next day. Leesa has mattresses designed for different sleep positions and comfort preferences. And their sleep quiz can help you get matched in less than two minutes. Plus, they're designed and they're assembled in the USA,

• 22:48Andrew Giancola?

  and they come with free shipping, easy returns, and a 120-night free sleep trial. So go to Leesa.com for up to 30% off mattress plus and get an extra $50 off with promo code PFP. Exclusive for my listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com, promo code PFP, for 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Leesa.com, promo code PFP. One thing I've learned from running multiple businesses is there's usually a gap between how you think work is getting done and how it's actually getting done. And we've had times where we thought we knew the bottleneck,

• 23:31Andrew Giancola?

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• 24:09Andrew Giancola?

  It automatically discovers workflows across multiple tools, then highlights your biggest inefficiencies and gives AI-powered recommendations with estimated time-saving. You know, I love saving time. It's also built with privacy in mind. It only runs across approved business applications. User-level data is anonymous by default and sensitive information is automatically redacted and never leaves your firewall. To see optimized action, head describe.how/pfp and mention PFP for a 30-day risk-free trial. That's S C R I B E dot H O W slash P F P. Here is something that I want you to say to yourself. If it has a due date, I want you to automate it.

• 24:50Andrew Giancola?

  So because here's the math, one late fee is about $29 and one late fee per month over the course of 10 years is about $34,080. And if you invest that at 9% rate of return, you lost $5,500 just to late fees alone. And so there are still folks out there that I have come across who are manually paying your bills. And if you're listening to this podcast right now and manually paying your bills, that is not the move whatsoever. So you need to make sure that you are automating every single bill. Now, how do we do this? We do this one of two ways. One, you have your flow-through account. What's our flow-through account again? That is our checking account. That's where money flows through that account so that we can ensure that we are actually getting those dollars to where they need to go.

• 25:32Andrew Giancola?

  So some of this money is already going to our investment accounts and we are starting to automate it out into our investment accounts. Now, we're going to start to automate our bills. Now, our bills can come out of one of two places. Number one is they can come out of your checking account. So a lot of things will come out of your checking account, like your mortgage, for example, maybe your rent, things like your electric bills or your utilities. There may be some other bills that you have on hand where you cannot pay with the second option, which is a credit card. Now, let's talk about this for a second. For a lot of folks out there, they want to earn points and miles. They want to earn rewards. They want to make sure they get all these extra perks and it's credit cards are great for that. They are a great option to pay your bills as low. Long as you pay the credit card off every single month. Now, here's the note is if you have ever had trouble with credit cards in the past, I don't want you using a credit card.

• 26:17Andrew Giancola?

  I'd rather you pay cash out of your checking account and make sure you pay your bills there. Or your debit card, whatever you want to use. But if you've never had issues with credit cards and you have been responsible with credit cards, they are a great way to get free vacations. They are a great way to get cash back. They are a great way to get all these extra perks just for paying your bills. And so I put as many bills as possible on a credit card. Every other bill that is not possible to put on a credit card, then I will pay it out of my checking account. Now, a lot of you right now may be saying to yourself, "Well, I wish I could pay my mortgage or I wish I could pay my rent with a credit card." That's coming, my friends. You can pay your rent with the Built card. And the Built card is coming out with something also that allows you to pay your mortgage. There is another card coming out that allows you to pay your mortgage.

• 27:03Andrew Giancola?

  So the rewards for paying your mortgage and rent are coming and they are getting better and better and better. And so these are things where at some point in time, you're going to be able to pay all of your bills on a credit card to acquire points and miles. Again, if you have not been responsible with your credit cards in the past, you got to make sure that you are just using a debit card in your checking account. Okay, so here's my system on how I do this. Okay, I pay most of my bills with my credit card, as many as I possibly can. Then I pay off that card with my checking account every single week. But Andrew, why would you do it every single week when you said pay it off month to month? The only reason why I do that is because I want to stay on top of it. I just want to stay on top of everything. I don't like when my credit card balances get bigger.

• 27:47Andrew Giancola?

  It's just a personal preference. It's probably an emotional thing. I just do not like credit card balances whatsoever. So I pay them off weekly. For all of you out there who don't care about that, you can pay it off monthly, no problem. But we have rules with credit cards and we will link up our episode down below that talks about credit cards and why you need to make sure that you are responsible with them. We have rules around credit cards. So if you haven't heard that episode yet, I highly recommend that you check it out. And so let's talk about some of these other bills, your rent or mortgage. We need to pay that out of the checking account, your utilities. The checking account, your insurance, like car insurance, those types of things. My car insurance is through State Farm. I can pay my State Farm with a credit card. I don't know about you and your car insurance,

• 28:28Andrew Giancola?

  but depending on what that is, you either have to pay out of your checking account or your credit card. Things like life insurance is going to come out of your checking account. Other things like umbrella insurance or business insurance, a lot of times it depends on the company, but those are things that you can pay either way. Subscriptions, great place to put on your credit card and just making sure you track those subscriptions to stay on top of them is the biggest key. Your phone bill, mine's on my credit card. You can put your phone bill on your credit card, things like internet, those types of things can all go on a credit card. Things like daycare usually need to come out of your checking account. Then you have like HOA payments or student loan payments. All those things are typically going to have to come out of your checking account. And then lastly is obviously paying your credit card. So last thing that I will say about this is automation is really important even when paying all these bills. So I want you to go into each of those

• 29:14Andrew Giancola?

  and I want you to set up auto pay. So you go into each of those accounts, set up auto pay, turn on auto pay, make sure it is fully paying those and then just make a quick checklist of all those items so that you can ensure they're getting paid every month when you do your 10 minute checkup. Now, one other thing I'll note is on all my credit cards, I always turn on auto pay just in case I forget to go in there and take a look at them. So they automatically will get paid no matter what every single month. And so that is another big key. Now, if you are someone who is living paycheck to paycheck and you're saying to yourself, I don't know how I'm going to automatically pay my bills when I can, I'm barely trying to get by. And so I manually pay them currently. Right after I get paid, I manually pay each and every single one of my bills. Well, here's a little hack for you and a tip. And we talk about this, we have a course called Automate Your Money in a Weekend. It's a $27 course. So if you're interested in that,

• 30:00Andrew Giancola?

  we'll link it up down below as well. And when you download the checklist, you'll probably get prompted to look at Automate Your Money in a Weekend. But for this episode, we are marking it down to $27, normally $99. And so when we are looking at this, there is something we talked about in that course where you can move your, the date of your bills. You can actually move the date that your bills fall on and you can call up these companies and I like to put them just a few days after when I get paid. And so you can look at your bills and say, hey, I need to move this bill, you know, three days after I get paid. In order to ensure that I can actually pay it on time. So you can move your bills to two different days throughout the month. Maybe you put some of them on the first and some of them on the 16th, for example. And when you do that, that will ensure that you have the money or the cash there. And you know what date your bills are going to be paid.

• 30:45Andrew Giancola?

  And so if you're living paycheck to paycheck or you are tight right now, money's tight right now. That's the best way to do it is to move your bills around. You call up each company, try to move it on specific dates. And then you'll be able to make those payments and understand where those dates fall. Tools like Monarch Money, sponsor of this show. They are also great because they show you the dates of your recurring expenses. And so there's a little calendar view there and it shows those dates of those recurring expenses. If you want 50% off of Monarch Money, just use code PFP. It's like four bucks a month if you pay for the entire year.

• 31:15Andrew Giancola?

  All right, the next step is we're going to talk about automating our spending. And so to automate your spending, one of the most important things I think most people need to realize is can you automate your groceries? Can you automate restaurants? Can you automate fun money? Yes, you absolutely can. And you can do it a couple of different ways. One is I use a tool like Monarch Money, which we just talked about, to ensure I am tracking all my expenses. Monarch Money, once you set up some rules inside of there, will automatically help you track your expenses where you don't even have to think about it. It just puts them in the correct category every single month. In Master Money Academy, we're about to do a Monarch Money breakdown of exactly how I set up my Monarch Money. So if you're not in Master Money Academy, make sure you join. We'll have the link down below so you can check that out.

• 31:57Andrew Giancola?

  But this is just one of those things that I think is really, really important for most people to understand. Is that you want to make sure you're tracking your spending, but you want to make sure you're tracking it automatically. So back in the day, what I would do is I would take my transactions, I'd move them in a spreadsheet. It was the most tedious and time consuming thing ever. I'd spend like three hours at the end of every single month, just making sure all my transactions are in order, making sure I got all of them, making sure the dates are correct. It was the most annoying thing ever. Now you could spend $4 a month, like I said, on Monarch Money and you'd be able to track all this stuff automatically. And then if you are living paycheck to paycheck or you're tight, then I recommend doing something like the five minute drill. The five minute drill is basically where you take two to five minutes every single day, just categorize those transactions, make sure they fit within your budget. So that you are on top of that budget there.

• 32:42Andrew Giancola?

  So when you are in a season where you have to budget a lot, it is a great way to do that. But for most of us, we just need to make sure we have a tool in place that allows us to track our finances. And a lot of those tools out there are pretty cheap. Most of you spend frivolously on random things that cost a lot more than those apps do for one month. I would highly encourage you to invest in one of those apps. You will be way better off with your money if you actually use an app. All right, step five, and this is going to be a bonus step that we're going to be talking about here, is to do the bucket method when it comes to your savings or to automate your safety nets. And so what I like to do is have a high yield savings account set up and ensure that I can automatically send money to that high yield savings account and have it in different buckets.

• 33:25Andrew Giancola?

  So I have Ally Bank, not affiliate with them whatsoever. I just have them because they have buckets set up. There's other places out there that you can do that with. I think SoFi, Betterment, there's a bunch of other places where you can find ways to set up these buckets to ensure that you have the bucket method set up. Now, we have a full episode on the bucket method. If you have not heard that episode, I highly encourage you to check that one out. And this is basically a way for you to make sure that you are set up for your savings goals. So that means sending money to your emergency fund every single month automatically, sending money for car repairs, sending money over to for any other savings goals that you have on hand. All of these are really, really important. And I highly encourage each and every single one of you to set up these automations that just goes directly into that savings account.

• 34:06Andrew Giancola?

  And so this is a big area where I think a lot of folks, if they just set up some of these buckets inside of their high yield savings account, it would change their life forever. So let's say, for example, you're saying to yourself, well, man, I am really tired of car payments. I don't want to have a car payment anymore. It feels like it just drains my finances every single month. I want to get this car paid off and I never want to have a car payment again. A lot of people will say that and say, how would I never have a car payment again? Let me show you. So for most of you, you've heard us talk about, we don't want you to have a car loan for longer than four years. And once that gets paid off, we want you to drive that car for at least 10. So for the next six years, while you are having zero car payment, one of the things that you could do is you could start to send money to your

• 34:49Andrew Giancola?

  Car bucket and what this is going to mean is that you are saving up cash in a bucket that allows you to pay cash for a car and so for six years in a row you are saving up this money over that timeframe maybe you drive the car for 10 years maybe you drive it for 15 that means you'd have even more time to save up cash for that specific vehicle this ensures that you never have a car payment again and for wealth builders out there I really want you to try to find ways to never have a car payment again this is one of the things that I am looking to do I am looking at never have a car payment again because I was so sick I'm just having these car payments over and over again now if you get a really favorable interest rate or something like that I get it I get the math I understand the difference there but for me it's just not something I'm super

• 35:31Andrew Giancola?

  interested in having long term and so because of this if you follow our rules putting 20% down only having four years of car payments driving those cars for 10 years or longer then you have a lot of time where you can take some of your extra money on years that you have no payments save up for a car take the rest of it put it towards future you so you can build wealth for your retirement and this is going to allow you to never have car payments again the average person in the US right now has almost $900 in car payments every single month I want you to eliminate that and put that towards future you or put it towards your vacations or whatever else you want to do with that money I don't want you wasting it on depreciating assets like a car and so that's one of the things that we look at all the time so that's just a big example of ways

• 36:12Andrew Giancola?

  that you could automatically save for your savings goals and some of the things that you want to do so another one we talk about all the time is holiday savings and so here's the way I treat something like holidays you're gonna look at your holiday bill this year or last year and you're gonna say to yourself well here's how much I spent it and every single year it seems like Christmas or the holidays just creeps up on me and I have to spend all this money and I either go into debt and or I just ruin my emergency fund or whatever other cash I have on hand well let me explain how Christmas works or the holidays work this is something where you're gonna spend money on the holidays every single year so you need to treat it like a bill so instead you set up a savings bucket and you send money every single month to that holiday

• 36:54Andrew Giancola?

  budget how much do you send well you look at how much you spent last year and divide that by 12 Much you send. So if you spent $2,400 last year, then you take $200 per month and start to put it into that account. This is going to ensure that you get to the holidays with zero stress whatsoever. The money is just there and there is power in having the money there. The same goes for your emergency fund. So most of you know, the 136 method is our system for saving for your emergency fund. That means saving one month, then three months, then six months, and there are things you do in between. That is where you do it is saving up here automatically. You can get those built up into six months of expenses. It is really, really powerful what we see people do with their emergency fund when they actually automate this. All right, perfect.

• 37:40Andrew Giancola?

  Now let's dive into step six, because step six is just your 10 minute monthly review. So what I want you to do is every month, I want you to think through this checklist to ensure that your money actually went where it's supposed to go. Number one is, did every investment go through? Number two is, did every bill hit? Number three is, did any subscriptions change? Did anything shift? Did the price go up on some of these subscriptions? What kind of happened there? Do I want to still keep the subscription? A lot of those subscriptions out there are going up 20, 30, 40, 50% per year. You get to think of things like Disney plus, or if you have Hulu or Netflix, they're all going up in price. And honestly, they're starting to rip us off, I think, but that's a whole nother podcast episode and a whole nother rant. Did I adjust anything or do I need to make some tweaks to this? And then lastly is, do I need to automate something new?

• 38:24Andrew Giancola?

  So 10 minutes, that's the entire job. That's all you have to take at the end of every single month. And so literally, we might be taking, you know, two hours max on our money if you really set this up properly. Now I want to give you a couple of examples here as we're talking through this. So in Master Money Academy, we have had a number of people start to automate their money. And a number of them have come to me after and said, hey, I feel like I'm not doing enough. And what they feel is because they set up these money automations, they feel like I should be in my spreadsheet or I should be doing all this other stuff. But instead I don't have to do that anymore, so I don't know what to do. And this is the beautiful thing about money automation is we have seen this time and time again, where people will come to me. Then they feel their stress relieved and some of them, if you're type A, you might feel a little bit of stress.

• 39:09Andrew Giancola?

  You're not doing enough and that's the key. That means the system is working, that you set up the automations correctly and so that you were able to not have to worry about this anymore. So you could focus your time on getting those raises or focusing your time on your family or focusing your time on your hobbies instead of having to worry about your money every second of the day. Automation is how you reduce that stress. It is how you reduce that anxiety. For me specifically, I've told this story a number of times. When I first hit rock bottom with my finances, I didn't have enough money to even fill up a tank of gas. And so when I did that, I started to set up money automations for everything and this changed my life forever. Because I set up those automations, money was just going where it was supposed to go. I wasn't spending frivolously on just

• 39:51Andrew Giancola?

  random stuff all the time. And so instead I had a plan for every single dollar and where it needed to go. And so this is what clawed me out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle, saving my first 100K in two years, getting my first million 10 years later. And this is how I did it, which is making sure I automated my money and it worked for me automatically. And your money can work so much harder than you ever can if you set up these automations properly. And so I highly encourage each and every single one of you to set up these money automation systems. If you get the checklist down below, I highly encourage you to check out that checklist. Again, that checklist will prompt you to a $27 course called Automate Your Money in One Weekend where I go through all of this and show you screen shares of exactly how this all works. And so really excited for each and every single one of you to check that out. Also, if you're in Master Money Academy, you get that

• 40:35Andrew Giancola?

  completely for free. So if you want to join Master Money Academy, make sure you join down below. We will have that linked up below as well so that you can check that out and you get all of our stuff for free and you get to do weekly calls every single week with yours truly where you can ask your questions and we go through a ton of other stuff in Master Money Academy. We have a bunch of courses. We have a deals section. We have so much stuff inside Master Money Academy. Really, really excited to meet you in there and see you inside. So listen, thank you so much to each and every single one of you for being here. Our goal is to bring you as much value as we possibly can with each and every single episode. I hope you did that today. Make sure you subscribe on YouTube. Make sure you subscribe on Spotify. And again, one cool thing that's coming up is we're going to have Spotify video coming up as well. So not just YouTube, but

• 41:19Andrew Giancola?

  Also on Spotify. So really, really excited for that. And so if you have a question or a comment, leave a comment in YouTube or Spotify and we'll try to answer all those questions for you. Again, thank you so much for being here and we'll see you on the next episode of the Personal Finance Podcast.