There is so much we have to do and think about these days. From kids going back to school to work to keeping up with our homes. It can be overwhelming!! I've found that there are some areas of my life that I can automate and take some of that stress and overwhelm away. Even just automating some of these small items can make life feel completely different. Have you automated anything in your life? What have you set on autopilot?
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Bills
Automating your bills is probably the most common area that people automate their life. With everything having different dates and most of us having lots of bills. This is especially a good one if you have issues remembering to pay them by the due date. Make sure you remember to put the total in your budget though! You don't want to not be aware of how much the bills are costing you especially ones that can vary a lot like your electric bill.
Groceries & household items
The past few years subscriptions have been all the rage. You can even have a subscription to items you order regularly from Amazon! By automating some of your groceries and household items you make sure that you never run out, you don't have to worry about purchasing the item and a lot of times by having a subscription you can get a better price.
Cleaner Inbox
Did you know that there are ways to automate your email so it goes straight to folders? I've been using this automation to clean up my inbox. The biggest one I use it for is professional list serves. I'm on a bunch and they would clog up my inbox like crazy. They all go to a folder so once a week I can either skim through them or do a keyword search then just delete the rest. This is also great if you get a lot of promotion emails. Although if you are always just deleting the email then just unsubscribe because clearly you're not reading them at all.
Finding coupon codes online
We all know I love a good deal. I would spend so much darn time trying to figure out coupon codes it was ridiculous. There I was 20 minutes later and four google pages in trying to find a code that worked. I feel like I am not the only person who does this right? So much time wasted. Then I had someone tell me about Honey, I was a little skeptical at first but it really does work. After you add the extension it just gives you a pop up when your in the cart and voila it checks all the deals to make sure you've got the best one. Honey has definitely saved me lots of time and money.
Monthly contributions & saving
I've always heard the saying pay yourself first and I think it's a really smart one. If you've never saved or put money away in a retirement account it can be tough to change over to that mindset at first. I recommend starting small with an automatic contribution into the account. Once you've worked out your budget and adjusted increase it a bit. Then you can adjust to that and so on until you're doing about 15-20% which is what most financial gurus and planners recommend. Just make sure you're doing this before the rest of your monthly expenses and making it a priority.
Budgeting
When we first started budgeting it took forrreeeever. Well at least that's what it felt like ha. We quickly realized that by both of us having access to EveryDollar through the app and online it makes things much easier. So we automated it that way but with most budgeting apps you can actually connect them to accounts and have the app pull in the charges automatically. So you just have to go in a double check but they do all the heavy lifting.
Create systems in your life
There are some things that as much as we want we can't totally automate them. One thing for me is cleaning as much as I would love to hire someone and totally automate that in my life it's just not in our budget. So since we can't afford to hire it out I've been working to create a system to make cleaning easier.
Maybe you don't want to spend money to have meal kits delivered to your house but want to make your lunches and dinners easier. Think about meal prepping in larger batches or doing a more intense meal planning at the beginning of the week. Setting up systems and sticking to them (always the tough part!) can help make life easier too.
If you've been blogging or doing any sort of social media stuff for a few years you might be familiar with IFTTT (If This Then That). Most of what it use it for is blog related but there is so much more it can do. You can have it save photos your tagged in to your Dropbox or connect it with your home devices now. Check out all the different applets or formulas you can make and you'll be amazed at what you can automate with IFTTT.
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