Thread by @anandchokkavelu

My system for saving.

(Savings rate > 20% per year)

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First, the personality quirks my system has to manage:
1) Fortunately, I get nervous if I'm spending more than I'm making. No problems saving vs. spending "bonus" money.
2) I hate the constraints of a constant daily budget.
3) I get excited for sprints, tired of marathons.

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On my wife's side, she basically doesn't want to think about money. She might not be able to tell you our net worth within 50%.

That means I manage all the finances and am the "no" person.

On the other side, I have close to full freedom in our investment allocations.

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Since neither of us wants to be micromanaged, I rely on automation and a high-level safeguard (bullet #5):

1) Automatically save in retirement and kids' college accounts.
2) Auto-pay bills from checking.

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3) If we're in the lucky position of our salary income far exceeding expenses, I'll reduce the gap with a fake bill...sending a set amount to our savings each month.

4) I manually move any non-salary lump sums immediately from checking into savings or investment accounts.

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5) All of the above allows our checking account to basically act as our budget.

When I'm frequently having to supplement it from savings/investments, it's time to figure out how to reverse it.

It ain't perfect, but it works well enough for us. Curious how others do it.

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