Sometimes it’s easier (especially with our finances) to just continue what we’ve been doing. I know that’s the case with me at least.

For around 5 years now, since I started saving money, I’ve been using daily transfers as an easy way to save money. Granted it wasn’t easy when I got started, but the small amounts made it easy and time went by.

I’ve made a lot of progress with our finances over the years, surely not as much as I would like, but I’m still happy. So last month, I decided that it was time to graduate from daily transfers and move on up.

At first, I was considering upgrading to weekly transfers. But after thinking about it for a while, I decided that since we get paid bi-weekly, I should aim for bi-weekly transfers.

That way, all the money is automatically transferred on payday. Leaving me less room for error in our budgeting and tracking our spending.

I was a little nervous at first because I had become so accustomed to multiple small transactions coming out every weekday. I would still be saving the same amount overall, it will just come out all at once.

I’m just not good with change, but I know I’m not the only one out there. But I eventually went into my Capital One 360 account and deleted all of my daily transfers (like 25 separate transactions) and created new bi-weekly transfers.

I also decided that I would hold off on growing our emergency fund, since I’m comfortable with the amount for the immediate future. So I added the money we were putting in there into our sub account for our second car.

In addition to that, I set-up an automatic transfer for our mortgage and bill money every payday. Now I don’t have to go in and do it manually like I was.

While I was on a roll, I popped over to our Roth IRA account and set-up an automatic transfer for the $25 I transfer in every payday.

It actually makes me less stressed about forgetting and makes our finances so much simpler to manage. But don’t get this confused with automatic bill payments, I still want nothing to do with them.

For me, if I don’t pay bills manually, I get too disconnected from the amounts and don’t pay as much attention to them. Our low income is also another reason I don’t like automatic bill payments, it removes the flexibility to pay when we have the money.

Not to mention, we would probably end up over-drafting because I budget and pay all these on a bi-weekly schedule. I would much rather spend the 10 or 15 minutes a month to pay these my way and ensure everything gets paid and in the amounts I want.

What works for one person doesn’t always work for another, but this has been one thing that has worked wonders for me. While you won’t catch me scanning currency charts or ETFs, I’m still making progress each day. In the end, I’m happy that I’ve come this far and can’t wait to see my future progress in finance.

Do you use automatic transfers to save money?
Do you prefer you bill payments to be automatically taken out?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/safari_vacation/8337153269/