Ndubuisi Egwim, who teaches personal finance to doctors, ditches budgeting for automation. His system uses direct debits to pay bills and automatically transfers money to savings, debt repayment, and investments each month. Budgeting fails like diets do. Automation doesn't rely on willpower.
I hate budgeting. Look, budgeting tells your money what to do, but automation makes sure it actually listens. Look, a lot of people think about strategies to budget and talk about strategies to budget, say, oh, it's important to budget, and try this app, try this spreadsheet, and all of that. Look, it feels to me like dieting. It all sounds good on paper until reality clashes with it, and then you start to struggle. I prefer to have systems in place that automate my finance because I think automation is far better than motivation. A practical example— I know for many people say, oh, this sounds like blasphemy coming from a personal finance author, a best-selling personal finance author that has taught over 4,000 doctors how to take care of their finances and tax-efficient investing. Yes, but here's my thinking around it. I, I approach my finance with it AMAS, Automated Monthly Allocated Savings System, is a framework I explained in Chapter 2 of my book, The Moneywise Doctor. Basically what it is, is you set up a direct debit to pay your bills and you pay yourself. You're already paying your GMC fees, you're paying for your electricity bill and water bills by direct debit. You might as well pay yourself. Set up a direct debit every month for the things that matter, that help you to achieve financial freedom, like paying off high consumer credit card debts, like saving and also investing. So tell me, do you budget? How do you budget? Or do you automate? Speak to you later.
