Make Lifestyle in Zen

I haven’t written about finances in awhile, because these days I barely think about them.

That’s because for several years, I focused on getting out of debt — and these days, I live completely debt-free and worry little about

finances. It’s a beautiful thing.

However, recently a reader asked me to write about Simple Budgeting, and so I thought I’d revisit the topic. I’ll talk about how I deal with

finances these days, and then a Simple Budgeting method for those who aren’t exactly debt-free yet.

How I Deal with Finances

As I said, these days my finances barely register on my brain. Now that I’m out of debt, it’s not a major issue for me, and I’ve automated

most of my finances.

Here’s what I do:

1. Income is streamed into my checking account automatically. My income is all electronic, so I never deal with checks. In a couple cases

I’ve purposely set up electronic payments when previously I was sent checks.

2. Savings & investments are automatically taken from the checking. If it’s not automatic, I might forget about it. Forgetting about it is a

good thing when it’s automatic though — I will check every few months and see how my savings and investments have grown.

3. I often make major payments all at once in the beginning of the year. Because I’ve been able to grow my savings account, now that I have

zero debt payments, I have a good cushion so that I can pay things like rent or other major expenses all at once in the beginning of the year.

This way I don’t worry about the payments each month, and I don’t spend money I might need for these payments.

4. Other bill payments are made automatically. If I don’t pay in one big lump sum, I’ll set up automatic monthly payments. I never worry

about paying bills. I just make sure there is enough in my checking account at all times to cover the total amount of my bills.