While going through our 2016 taxes over the weekend, it hit me how many different accounts and deductions the average person needs to keep track of throughout the year. I can see how people get themselves into trouble with missed payments and overdraft fees if they are not organized or ignore their financial responsibilities. It doesn’t take long to lose control! We have over 20 accounts and regular bills to keep track of on a bi-weekly or monthly basis ourselves.
If you prefer a visual representation, take a look at this financial map I put together showing all the different points our money hits on a regular basis.
A quick shout out to Turbo Tax, this is the first year I have done our taxes since 2011 and it was incredibly easy. The most impressive part is how they integrated to all of our accounts and pulled all the information in automagically. Even from our payroll software at work! This is not a sponsored post, I just want to promote something that works well and saves time.
Our Financial Map
Breaking down our Financial Map
- Green – Automated Transfer to retirement account or Bill on Autopay
- Red – Manual Bill Payment
- Blue – Connected account without automatic transfer running (Our Emergency Fund is fully funded)
Our financial map consists of 13 accounts, 10 monthly bills and 1 Credit Card.
At first glance, it looks really complicated, but in reality, we are a pretty average family. We don’t have multiple business accounts, we don’t use multiple savings accounts to save for certain purchases and we only use 1 credit card.
Our monthly bills are pretty normal for a millennial household. We don’t have any store specific credit cards to keep track of and only have one car payment (under $10K left!). If you have a lot of scattered debt, the map will get increasingly more complicated.
Can I remove some complexity?
The first thing I looked at after creating our Financial Map was “Can I remove some complexity”? For us the answer is no, this is about as simple as it can get. We don’t duplicate any accounts. We each have a Roth IRA, 401K and ESPP account that aligns with our financial goals. Nothing stands out on the bill front either, even when we cut cable, we will still have to pay for internet.
I could automate our credit card payment, but since it comes due between our student loans and mortgage I manually pay that one to prevent an overdraft.
If you create your own Financial Map, look for account duplications or if there is an opportunity to move multiple counts under one provider. Our E*Trade account is a good example, we house both Roth IRAs and our taxable brokerage account under a single login.
Our Emergency Fund is broken out into a separate account to get a better interest rate from an online bank. 1% is better than .05% :).
Am I using Automation to make money management easier?
Could you imagine logging in every payday to move money to your retirement/investing accounts?
I can’t. Every month there is at least 30 automatic transfers between our accounts. We rely on it to pay ourselves first and ensure our bills are paid on time. The only other option I can think of is having a calendar reminder setup on payday and every due date. Logging in and out would get old quick, there are 17 username/password combinations!
Automate. Check in. Relax.
Creating your Financial Map
You can create your own Financial Map pretty easily using Draw.io (It’s free). Get a list of all your accounts together and mark which ones are automated. It’s easiest to start with your Primary Checking account and branch out from there.
Don’t forget about accounts through your employer, even though you don’t do much to set them up you still have to maintain and track them.
I went through our most recent credit card and checking account statements to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.
If you have one already, or create one in the future send it over and I will link to it in this section.
Using Personal Capital
Throwing a quick pitch for Personal Capital. It allows me to see the balance of every account I care about in 10 seconds with one App login. See for yourself:
All of our investment, general banking and loan balances can be seen using my thumbprint from my phone. If you are interested in trying out Personal Capital you can use this link.
I may receive compensation if you use the above link. That being said I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t use it myself.
How do you keep track of all your financial responsibilities? Do you automate everything that can be? Have you created a Financial Map (I would love to see some comparisons)?
Whoop! Look at all of these comparisons! Let me know if you create your own and want to join this chain!
Anchor: Budget on a Stick
Link 1: The Luxe Strategist
Link 2: Adventure Rich
Link 3: Minafi
Link 4: OthalaFehu
Link 5: The Frugal Gene
Link 6: Working Optional
Link 7: Our Financial Path
Link 8: Atypical Life
Link 9: Eccentric Rich Uncle
Link 10: Cantankerous Life
Link 11:The Retirement Manifesto
Link 12: Debts to Riches
Link 13: Need2Save
Link 14: Money Metagame
Link 15: CYinnovations
Link 16: I Dream of FIRE
Link 17: Stupid Debt
Link 18: Spills Spot
Link 19: Making Your Money Matter
Link 20: Life Zemplified
Link 21: Trail to FI
Link 22: The Lady in the Black
Link 23: Smile & Conquer
Link 24: Her Money Moves
Link 25: Full Time Finance
Link 26: Abandoned Cubicle
Link 27: Freedom is Groovy
I use good old Excel to do all my tracking. My bills are quite a bit simpler – no loans, no gas, no water bill – and my investments are more complex. I have different companies for my work 401k, savings accounts, checking account, savings bonds, and everything else, but I can’t simplify unless I want a much worse interest rate rate/to get rid of my awesome savings bonds. Love the money map idea though, it would certainly help you simplify if you had a very complex situation!
Thanks, Liz – pretty awesome that you don’t have any bills! I would deal with a little complexity for a better interest rate (and do for our Emergency Fund)
It’s funny because I started reading this assuming my accounts were all SOOO SIMPLE, but it looks like we have the same if not more accounts than y’all do. There are usually easy ways to automate, which we’ve done, and that takes a lot of stress off financial planning.
Same here, as I was going through our checking account the map exploded. Gotta get rid of a few of those loans to keep it to net worth building accounts only!
This is such a great idea! I will definitely have to create my own.
Let me know if you do!
I feel like my accounts are fairly simplified and very similar to your setup here. Having good routines for tracking accounts that take minimal amounts of time (such as using personal capital to see all your balances at a glance) really frees up a lot of time to work on other aspects of your personal finances like getting updated insurance quotes, running retirement projections and other such fun things. I honestly love organizing my finances and finding new ways to streamline it.
One thing that is somewhat related that saves me a ton of time is using a password manager (I use LastPass). Because I usually look at my financial accounts within other software, when I need to login to those accounts, all of which have different complicated passwords, it makes it so easy and I never have to try to remember or reset them like I used to.
Great post-love it!
Glad you mentioned a password manager as that has been on my to-do list for awhile. Between work and our personal stuff I bet there are 50 different logins for me to remember and I know there are solid tools out there to make it easier.
Thank you!
I’m such a visual guy that I can’t believe I’ve not done this myself. Love it!
I have a spreadsheet that’s I’ve been using and adding to for years. All of my data feeds into different charts and tables so creating this shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll check out draw.io as well.
Thanks Ty – check it out and send me a link if you create one!
Simplifying and automation are the way to go for many reasons. I use credit cards for almost everything I can (and earn points in the process) then it gets paid automatically on the due date from my high-yield checking account.
Same here on the credit card front, which we could pay our car off with one.
Thanks for the comment
I love this. After looking at your map, I realized things may be a little more complex on the Centsibly Rich map. And maybe I could simplify it further?! We automate everything except credit card bills (which I pay online), so that doesn’t take a ton of effort, but we do have multiple bank accounts (some of which may be unnecessary).
Take a look for sure – no need to duplicate!
We use Excel for tracking. Recently I consolidated some accounts to make things simpler. Not touching certain accounts for a few years can lead to escheatment and we had some accounts that fit the bill.
Have to do some spring cleaning on the finances occasionally – we had a few accounts last year that needed to be cleaned taken care of – sitting idle with no intention of using them.
This is an awesome visual representation. I always like seeing other people’s money system. Mine is pretty crazy looking like yours too. I’ve got so many accounts pulling money out of my checking account all the time, so there’s constant cycling of all my money.
Thanks, FP – I couldn’t imagine trying to handle this without automation, when you map it out it sinks in how complex a families finances truly are.
Like the map! Great idea! I use an Excel spreadsheet.
You could call me a lazy accountant because I have everything on autopilot. For our utilities, I take the average of the last 12 bills and send a flat payment using bill pay. We have our mortgage on ACH. We only use one credit card for our expenses which we pay off every week.
For taxes, I also use TurboTax software which I install from a disk because it’s not safe to have your tax info stored online. I agree that TurboTax is very user friendly, and like how it can send our taxes over electronically and encrypted. I don’t trust sending our sensitive tax info via the USPS.
Thank you – paying bills without thinking, I will call that proactive instead of lazy!
Great visual AE! I so need to do this! There are times when I think I have a good handle on all of our accounts, but this would help me see places to streamline. I think this would be a good way to show our kids all the different accounts you can have too – and how they all relate. Well done!
Thanks, Vicki.
That is a good idea, show them what it’s like to be an adult for a month!
Very cool visual! I use personal capital to track most of my accounts (can’t connect work coinvest unfortunately) and YNAB for budgeting. I would love to simplify my investment accounts but for now it is what it is. I’m limited by my job on how I can move/sell assets.
Very interesting concept, using a map.
My husband and I do not use a financial map, but rather track everything in our excel budget (which includes contributions to savings, as well as the expenses). I find this to be better for us because it everything is in one place and we can customize it fairly easily.
One thing that this map did make apparent to me, though, is that we should add our cumulative totals of savings, retirement and investment accounts somewhere on the spreadsheet. We have a column next to our monthly “debt payments” that shows the total remaining amount due, but I think we should also do this for the other accounts that we contribute to.
We automate most things with the exception of our vacation savings account and credit card payments. We manually contribute to our vacation savings account because this is the account that we contribute to last with whatever money is leftover after paying and contributing to everything else. As for credit cards, they vary a lot month-to-month, so it’s easier for us to manage paying them manually. We pay them off in full every month and just put our expenses on there to build up points.
I love the map idea! I use a simple spreadsheet to keep track of everything along with Personal Capital. I think my finances are pretty simple and I have everything as streamlined as I can, but I might create a map just for fun!
I use Excel and Personal Capital to do our tracking as well, and since I simplified our accounts a couple of years ago it’s definitely become easier. Using credit cards to pay for expenses & then paying them off every month limits the actual bill paying part, just have to be diligent in verifying the statements.
I’ve been thinking of a password manager too. Glad to hear it works well for MYMM.
I’ve recently discovered visual maps and find them quite useful. Thanks for sharing.
Fortunately my financial map is pretty simple. I don’t have a mortgage or other debt, and most of my bills are automated. On top of that, I keep a financial calendar that reminds me of regular bill payments.
Hey Mr. AE, love the visuals. I try very hard to limit my recurring expenses as well. I love personal capital as well, but for a general overview of my finances including all expenses, I created a one page Financial Overview Spreadsheet. Feel free to use it if you like: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FLJJ7KcFspcXRg0zxW1lTmAmmzb7ud8Td5OrEVZzpx4/edit?usp=sharing
I use Personal Capital to track net worth and YNAB to track expenses and budget. I like the visual representation also though. It might allow me to drop YNAB as it only serves as a reminder of what I have to pay and where my money is going. I will give it a try for a month. Thanks for the idea!
This is such a clever idea. This will be basically… a real treasure map! Omg! xD
I’ll make mine by tonight, it’s probably going to be complicated so I’ll put it to the test.
My map is more complicated, but the beauty of automation and mint make it easy to manage. I monitor closely enough that I noticed my girlfriend forgot that my card was on her app and used it to order $2.18 worth of goods. I was grateful it was her oversight and not someone stealing.
Similar to Mrs Picky Pinker above I came into this thinking mine were soooo simple as well until I read through. In fact I probably have more accounts than you do!
I love doing things manually though. I’ll wait for a bill, check the due date and choose my pay day that is the closest to but before this date and write it down on a post it note and stick it to my computer. Then once per fortnight on pay day I pay all bills (including savings – usually adds up to 3-4 total) and that is it for the next 2 weeks. I enjoy watching my balances grow so I need an excuse to log in regularly 😉
Nice work, and thanks for inspiring this worthwhile exercise! I realized I forgot to include my ESPP in my map, but I always sell as soon as the six months are up so it’s really pass through, but income nevertheless.