Before online banking, saving money was a pain. You had to carefully plan how much and how regularly you are going to stash a chunk of your paycheck, sometimes you had to handle cash and those annoying deposit tickets. However, in this day and age practically every institution is giving you the ability to move money around fairly easily. Therefore, ignoring your stash is pretty much unforgivable … a lot more so now than during the pre-electronic money transfer days.

So how I am being a good pirate by continuously contributing money to my stash? By using recurring transfers, that’s how.

Once I’ve reached the point in my life where not having that fifty bucks in the bank would guarantee that I would bounce a $15 check, I immediately set up a recurring transfer from my main account into my Scottrade investment account.

Scottrade makes it easy:

Just point them to your account, and they will happily pull out whatever amount you specify at desired intervals (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc). I have them pull out around $100 every paycheck (every week) and I’ve gotten so used to it, I wouldn’t have it any other way. So much better than hoard the $400 somewhere, then write a check to Scottrade at the end of the month, ew. Actually, once you give them the logins to your banking website, they make it almost scary easy, especially when they tell you how much money you got in other bank accounts …

Bank of America is glad to accomodate your desire to hoard as well:

After a confirmation email or two, just punch in the name of the other bank, and BoA will send money these pronto.

However, I think Emigrant Direct takes the cake – their external transfers were the easiest to set up, and they post the same day.

Same schpiel – point to an account, press Submit.

I’m telling you, there’s no excuse to set up a recurring transfer one day before your paycheck gets Direct Deposited. What??? Your paycheck is not Direct Deposited???