recursion

Since I became a wage slave with a steady paycheck I’ve been making some adjustments in how I manage my money. I no longer have chaotic income patterns or need to reserve 40% of my income for paying taxes.

As part of that, I’ve been trying to follow conscious spending practices. I’ve set up goal savings accounts for larger spending, which I contribute to on a schedule.

Well, I try to. I have Google Calendar reminders set up to remind me to move money around and pay our bills, but I wish I could automate it. I would like “IFTTT for money” or “webhooks for paychecks”. It would be awesome if I could set up a system that got a notification that I’ve received income, and take action on that.

A trigger-based system would enable really advanced automatic money management. For example, when you got a deposit larger than a certain size, you could have the system email you, transfer 50% into your joint checking account, transfer 5% into your rainy day fund, transfer $200 into your vacation goal savings account, and schedule a deposit into your retirement account and HSA. Whatever was left-over would be “guilt-free” spending money. Lose your job? The paychecks stop so the trigger never fires – unlike an automatic transfer.

Is there anything out there like this? I haven’t found it. It would be hard to build because you’d need access to your customers’ bank accounts. A banking startup like Simple could do it – they have something called Goals which automatically deduct from your “safe to spend” balance, but I think triggers would still be more powerful.