Automating Your Investments: Consistent Growth, Less Stress?

You know, it's interesting, as I get older, I'm really starting to really embrace automation. How about you? Well, I got this listener question the other day and I thought this was perfect.As we're working through this month long talking about investments, I thought this was perfect. And this listener wrote this. She said, Ralph, I know I should be investing, but I never seem to remember to do it.Is there a way to make it easier so I don't have to think about it all the time? What a great question. Sort of that set it and forget it mentality.And if you're like me, so many people as I get older especially I just need that routine, I need that automation in my life. And truth is, sometimes the best financial decisions are the ones you don't have to make over and over again. I've learned that as I get older.I just turned 53 and I'm finding that the more things that I can automate my life, the better it is.And see this automation, when we really think about it, it takes the stress out of investing and it makes it happen in the background while you go live your life. And if you're like me, you know, life is busy. Well, let's talk about that on today's show.This is Financially Confident Christian, your daily dose of gospel, grounded insight and faith driven tips to help you break the cycle of financial shame with confidence. Hey there, I'm Ralph, welcome to the show. I've helped clients set up automatic contributions to their retirement accounts for years.And the truth is it's all about this consistency. And I've seen how this consistency has changed their future without constantly worrying about, did I do that?We talked the other day about compounding. We talked about how those small little continual steps lead to big results over time.And that's the whole point of really looking at automation from a investment perspective. And truth is, life gets busy. If you're like me, life seems like it's nonstop.Last couple days I've had back to back clients like where are all these people coming from? But it's so easy to fall into that trap or that, that wait until that mentality when I'm ready for it.Because the truth is, let me ask you right now, do you feel this way sometimes you think about, well, I'll do that when I feel ready for it. Somehow it just doesn't happen. And I want to tell you about a client of mine, client I worked with many years ago.He had come to me, younger guy, wanted to set up his 401k at work. The cool thing about that, one of the things that I love about 401ks at work is pretty much set in. Forget it.Because once you enroll with the HR people at, it's pretty much going to happen. But he never thought about how much it could be and how much his balance would grow over time. I want to give you something amazing.Think about this for a second. Here's a guy, I kind of used this example the other day about compounding at age 25. Now this is the guy just put 3% into his retirement.We're going to talk in the next few days about what we do beyond that because it's not really enough. But just for today, just bear with me here. Age 25, he was just putting in the employer match.In his particular case, the employer matched up to 3% of his salary. So for sake of this discussion, let's say he had a $30,000 salary.So he was putting $900 a year into his 401k done automatically when payroll hits, it comes right out the top. He never even saw the money.When we did the calculations, we realized that when he goes to retire at 65, so 25 to 65, 40 years, listen to this number. He is going to have $179,672. See, that's the value of that automation. That's that value of making it just absolutely automatic.And I found this quote from David Bach. Now, David Bach wrote a book called Automatic Millionaire. I thought this was a great principle. And he said this. I love this.You don't get rich by what you earn. You get rich by what you keep. And I'm telling you right now, David, that is very sound advice. And it's advice that we all can benefit from.So now you might be saying, okay, Ralph, how do we make this happen? How do we make this automation happen? Well, it all comes down to really four or five key things. The first thing is consistency.The thing I love about investments, especially 401ks. But if you don't have the benefit of a 401k, you can still get to this automation just set up some kind of automatic contributions.That's the cool thing about technology. Now, there's so many ways to set up these automated transactions.You can set it up so that as soon as your pay hits or as soon as money hits your bank account, it just comes out so that you don't miss a month when life gets busy, like I said earlier, it's sort of that set it and forget it mentality. And life Gets busy. I don't know about you, but as the days get longer, I just feel like there's more and more going on in my life.So the first thing is about consistency. Those automatic contributions just lead to consistency. And think about that long term.At just $900 in his annual salary contribution, that investment grew to a whopping almost $180,000. That's one of the real benefits of that automation. Second one is it takes away the emotion.I don't know about you, but how many times have you been tempted to just skip that investment because you've got fear? Or, hey, like most people, I was leaving for the office to come over here and record. This morning, my wife says, guess what, Ralph?The trash compact is not working again. Well, it would be very simple to say, well, there's going to be another expense. I'm going to have to curtail my investments this week.But because I've got it set up automatically, there's no emotion in this. It just automatically goes, because if you're like me, things happen in life. There's going to be unexpected expenses, and it's so easy.I don't know about you, but I feel tempted sometimes to just skip that investment. I've got this fear I'm not going to have enough money or just the excuse I just didn't get to it. So that's a big component of this.Another one is all about those small, consistent steps. If you hear nothing else that I've talked about during this investment strategy series, it's all about those small steps.$25, $50 a month grows significantly over time. Think about what we talked about in the example today. That young person starting at 25, just putting in the 3% in their salary of 30,000 a year.They only put in my $900 a year of their own money grows to $179,000 at the time that they go to retire at 65. It's those small, consistent steps. Well, automation helps with that because you're not constantly thinking about, do I have to go do that?Do I remember to do that? That's the thing. When I meet with tax clients, a lot of my small business clients, they make a retirement contribution once a year.And all the time I'll say to them, hey, have you been making those retirement contributions? Well, Ralph, I'm going to get to that later. I'm going to do that later. I'll do that before tax time. Next thing you know, we're at tax time.They haven't done it, and now they don't have the money to do it. So this small step, even if it's just monthly or bi weekly, is huge.Another big thing about automation and I talk about this on the show all the time, it's about paying yourself first. When you automate things, you start to treat investments like it's a non negotiable. It's not a place where I'm gonna negotiate this automatic.It's part of taking care of your future. I saw a thing on Facebook the other day and I thought this was brilliant.One of my colleagues, she does a show for young people who are getting married and try to match their finances together. And she asked this question, she said, what would you like to tell your young self that you know now about investing?And I thought that was brilliant. One of the things that I would have told myself is pay myself first. That's why it's so important.This automation helps you treat that like a non negotiable. It's just part of the deal.But before I can even get to any discretionary money, my automation kicks in and it puts that money in those investments and I'm building the future. And final thing leads to peace of mind.The things I hear people talk about when they send me messages from the show or they get comments on our YouTube channel. And we do have a YouTube channel by the way, if you missed it, you can go to our YouTube channel if you're just hearing this audio podcast.I actually do a video version every day, so I'm encourage you to check it out and I'll put a link to that and in the show notes. But peace of mind is the thing I hear time and time again from people.Automation frees you up so that you can focus on life, you can focus on the busyness, you can focus on those things and you know right away, because life gets busy, doesn't it? But you know right away that your money is quietly working for you. Let's get into the Bible a little bit.I found this verse from First Corinthians, chapter 16, verse 2. And, and this just absolutely nails the whole idea of automation and stewardship.Now back in the Bible days, they didn't have a lot of automation as it relates to technology. But this verse is perfect. Again, First Corinthians 16:2.On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income. That's exactly what we're talking about here in the Bible.So even back in biblical days, the Bible, the word of God, Is pointing us to something that very important. What does it say here on the first day of the week, not the second, not the third, but the first.In other words, at the beginning, each one of you, not some of you, but each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income. See God's words reminding us of the power of that consistency.Like I talked about, that consistency, that discipline and that setting aside, that paying yourself first, taking those small steps and really building that peace of mind. Well, how about we pray together? Father, we just come to you today and we just thank you for the abundance that you give us in our lives, Lord.And as we think about this automation and we really focus on this time of thinking about investments, Lord, we ask that you would help us to have discipline, Lord, to set up this automation. Help us not to delay these things and procrastinate when life gets so busy, Lord.And at the same time help us to build our faith and trust in you for our long term planning.We don't put all of our beliefs in our investments order what's in our bank account, but we do trust you that you're going to help us in this long term planning, Lord, we just give you all the gratitude in the world, Lord, for the steady growth that comes little by little. We see how these things multiply, Lord, and we know that is a function of your grace and your mercy for us.So Lord, we just ask that you would help us to be disciplined in that, help us to trust you, Lord, and we just thank you with a heart of gratitude and we ask this in the precious name of Jesus. Amen. So I always want to give you just one action item that you can take. So here's my action item for today. Super simple today.I just want you to set up one automatic contribution. If you've got a 401k, set it, do it. If you don't have that, go set up that ira, go meet with your bank, go meet with a broker and get that set up.And listen, even if it's not that, set up your savings account with online banking and tools.You can set it up automatically so that when your paycheck hits or you or you get a deposit to your account, it goes directly into that savings because you're building for that future. And like I've said probably 10 times today, even if it's small, even if it's just a little bit, that automation builds that habit for you.I would really appreciate if you would consider supporting the show. This is truly a labor of love for me, but I would really appreciate it if you would support the show.If you were interested in supporting the show, you can give some money to the show.You can help us grow the show, help us do more advertising and really reach more people with what I feel is a positive message of hope and it's a way to break that cycle that so many people are feeling in financial shame. And if you want to support the show, you can go to FinanciallyConfidentChristian.com/support. It's super simple.Again, go to FinanciallyConfidentChristian.com/support. So as I recap today, today was all about automation. It's all about building that consistency without feeling that stress all the time.Because when you do this, and trust me on this, when you do this, it takes away the excuses and it takes away the forgetfulness and those small, regular amounts, as I said, think about that $900 a year, $179,000 at retirement.Those small amounts lead to big results over the time and it helps us live out that faithfulness in that discipline to bring peace in our finances, in our faith. You can do this. I have the utmost belief in you. Believe in yourself, because I'm going to tell you right now, the Lord believes in you.So go out there today and be a financially confident Christian. Stay financially savvy. God bless you. And don't forget to join me again tomorrow where we're going to be talking about investment fees.A lot of people don't understand just how much they're paying for those investments. Well, I'm going to pull the lid off tomorrow and I'm going to show you just how much you're paying. So make sure you join me tomorrow. God bless you.And you have a great day today.