…with barely a speck of athletic ability (true), but now my prowess in matters financial makes up for all that.
I think Coach Devine says it best…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w8BfH1Q_zM[/youtube]
No one, and I mean NO ONE, comes into our house and pushes us around! Not the brick-and-mortar banks who try to nickel-and-dime us with fees! Not the credit card companies who charge ludicrous interest rates on our balances (which we shouldn’t be carrying, anyway)! And, most especially, not our own bad habits, like when we convince ourselves that we don’t earn enough money to invest (with a discount brokerage you can open a Roth IRA with just $50!) .
I’m in the fourth quarter (aka Week 5) of the 6-week plan to financial literacy outlined by Ramit Sethi in I Will Teach You to Be Rich. The clock is running low, but Team Erin is ahead by 28. And I’m about to sack the quarterback, in a manner of speaking. 
This week, per Ramit’s pep talk, I created an Automatic Money Flow that will manage my money for me. All my accounts are linked, so that my 401(k) contribution is taken out of my paycheck before I ever see it. Then my paycheck is direct-deposited into my brick-and-mortar checking account. From there, I’ve set up automatic transfers: my checking account funds my Roth IRA and my high-interest online savings account and pays my credit card bill. I use my credit card to pay my utilities bill. What’s left is free for me to spend as I please. As Ramit puts it, “Once it’s set up, this system is so hands-off that if you got eaten alive by a Komodo dragon, your money system would continue transferring money from account to account by default, a ghostlike reminder of your financial prescience. Haunting, but cool.”
Not as thrilling as being carried off the field after recording the first and only stat of my college football career—but so EASY PEASY that it makes me wonder why someone hasn’t written an inspirational personal finance film based on my life.
(For those who are interested, Notre Dame’s first game of the season, vs. South Florida, is next Saturday at 3:30 p.m. GO IRISH!)
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