Paying bills automatically
Jonathan Levi
Lessons
Class Introduction: Structure & how to succeed
03:57 2Why do things quicker
05:14 3Where most people spend (or waste) their time
04:48 4Quiz: Chapter 1
5The power of preparation
03:11 6Having clear priorities & goals - and making them "SMART"
07:38Organizing priorities with the Priority Star Exercise
09:19 8Setting deadlines & and making them real
04:18 9The Pareto Principle - our secret to being effective
03:57 10The "Bad" kind of multitasking, avoiding distractions, and meditation
07:43 11Batching similar tasks
03:48 12The "Good" kind of multitasking & the wheel of life
04:26 13Planning for structured rest periods
05:57 14Using small chunks of wasted time effectively
04:16 15Quiz - Chapter 2
16Just how much time are you wasting on your computer?
06:44 17Automating meeting scheduling
04:56 18Text expansion - stop typing the same things over and over
04:24 19Speaking is faster than typing - and clicking
05:33 20Using custom gestures to speed up common tasks
03:43 21Launchers - act without doing
06:02 22Wasting less time reading and sorting through email
03:41 23Automating simple, repetitive tasks effectively across the web
05:03 24Watching lectures, videos, and podcasts faster
04:48 25Quiz: Chapter 3
26Getting fit in fewer hours
04:10 27Spend less time cooking
04:02 28Sleeping less and feeling better
06:00 29Quiz - Chapter 4
30Monitoring your finances automatically
04:30 31Paying bills automatically
05:29 32Quiz - Chapter 5
33Some things just aren_t worth your time
11:21 34Thoughts & tips on "outsourcing"
06:18 35Speeding up decisions
09:14 36Speeding up communication
05:12 37Splitting Time Into “Maker” and “Manager” Days
05:06 38Quiz - Chapter 6
39What we've learned, conclusion, and congratulations
02:51 40Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Paying bills automatically
now that we've covered most of the quick wins we can make in our health lives with lectures on cooking, sleeping and fitness. Let's talk about another big aspect of everyone's life finances. Financial responsibility is an important, important aspect of our lives. Of course. I mean we need to make sure that we're not being charged for things that we didn't order, ensure that we're meeting our long term financial goals and make sure that we don't miss payments or in current interest on things like our mortgage, rent or credit card. But all of this doesn't mean that it has to take up a lot of our time. I remember that when I was a kid, my mother would sit for hours every month going through the credit card statements, tracking expenses, balancing the checkbook and making sure that there were no suspicious charges not to mention tax time when the entire family would sit and sort through receipts and expenses. Here's a picture of me trying to help with this momentous task, but this isn't an...
isolated incident. In fact, most people I know spend an hour or two every month going through their bank statements and credit card statements at the very least, or recording and tracking budgets manually in some extreme cases. Remember how I told you earlier on in the course that there are some things that a computer can do better than you can. Well this is definitely one of them instead of going through your credit card statement line by line and making sure there are no fraudulent or unwanted charges. You can take advantage of. Very sophisticated and powerful software algorithms that determine how much you're being charged for what and whether or not it's changed. There are a number of great apps for this including clarity, money, true bill and card life. These apps have a bunch of different features they can determine for example, all of the subscriptions that you've signed up for and let you know if something changes. Some of them can even alert you when suspicious charges post to your credit card though most likely your credit card company is already doing that for you. These tools are great for prevention and for keeping a watchful eye on your expenses. But what about budgeting and expense tracking and seeing the big picture of your finances for that. I like to use two separate apps that I personally recommend. The first is called Mint dot com and it's a company that was actually bought by financial software industry giant into it. Mint hooks up to all of your bank accounts, credit cards and other accounts and tracks all of your spending. It also lets you make awesome budgets tag and categorize expenses and easily search through all of your financial activity in one search, it will then send you alerts when there are unusually large charges or when you exceed your budget in a specific category. This can save you time in two ways. First is that it helps you automatically budget and track expenses effortlessly saving you from counting up receipts if you're the type of person who likes to know what you're spending on what. And the second is that when it comes time to do your taxes, you can save many, many hours of research and searching through receipts and invoices personally. I just create a tag for all tax deductible business expenses and write offs and at the end of the year I'm able to quickly total them up from mid dot com and send them to my accountant. Another automatic monitoring solution that I want to propose is a newer one and it's actually run by former intuit Ceo Bill Harris. It's called Personal Capital and they offer a free service similar to Mint dot com's. The difference with personal capital is that it offers much more in depth and sophisticated tracking of investment portfolios which can save you a lot of time spent or in most cases time that should be spent but is not spent, that's time reviewing your investment and ensuring that things are in tip top shape. Now I love personal capital because it allows me to check all of my bank balances investments and gains in one screen, saving me tons of time. I would otherwise waste logging into a bunch of different accounts and downloading statements to make sure that everything is okay. But what about keeping tabs on your credit score and making sure that people aren't applying to loans in your name. Well for that, you should check out a great site called Credit Karma. This site automatically scans your credit score and will alert you if something fishy is happening while you sleep. It does a great job at estimating what your credit score is, which means that you don't need to fill out that annual credit check from the three bureaus, which is a huge waste of time every year. Best of all credit karma is completely free. Now all of these apps have desktop web and tablets and even mobile versions, which makes checking your finances. A great candidate for filler time. As we talked about earlier, you can get a quick and complete overview of your entire financial life in a matter of minutes with these apps, which frees you from manually laboring through monitoring and calculating expenses. Check these apps out and see how much time you can save with these systems of checks and balances in place, it's time to let go of the reins on your finances just a little bit and let automation take over