Automatic savings and control: How much?

After $1,610.55 saved with the Change app over four months, I'm pausing automatic savings. It's not because I wasn't pleased with the great things Change did …

The Change app was a great app. I was impressed with it over four months.

All told, Change discreetly, effortlessly, and smartly squirreled away $1,610.55 for me over the past four months. Here's how things look now, and I'm tickled:

Date	Amount
Previous	$1,340.90
9/12/2017	$26.74
9/13/2017	$26.80
9/14/2017	$27.04
9/18/2017	$27.37
9/19/2017	$26.86
9/20/2017	$27.20
9/21/2017	$26.46
9/25/2017	$26.92
9/26/2017	$27.30
9/27/2017	$26.96
TOTAL	$1,610.55

Table of Contents

Automatic savings … with a new level of trust

At the time I installed this app and handed it my bank account information, it was an experiment.

An experiment in technology, sure, but also an experiment in trust.

If I wanted to use the Auto-Saving feature of Change, I had to trust it with my bank privileges on a level I hadn't trusted anyone, or anything, else.

I didn't know in advance exactly how much, or how often, it would withdraw money from my account into a savings account. All I knew was that it would withdraw, up to a few times a week, somewhere between $5 and $150 each time, and that it wouldn't withdraw anything if there was a danger that I'd overdraft.

It seems a bit risky to trust an algorithm with withdrawals from my bank account, but I did it anyway.

Change did exactly what it said it would. Now I have over $1,600 saved to show for it.

What's more, I hardly missed the money.

I've got no regrets that I trusted Change. No regrets at all.

But … does every dollar have a name?

My wife and I have been doing Dave Ramsey‘s Financial Peace University for a few weeks now through our church. I can see why he has such a devoted following. He's a dynamic speaker with a rock-solid method.

We just completed the week where we designed a zero-based budget — where we assign a name (category of income or expense) to every dollar that comes in and goes out.

As much as I've been pleased with what Change did for me, I (somewhat reluctantly) paused the Auto-Saving feature.

The main reason I paused it was for the same reason I turned it on: Because the amounts were variable, and based on my balance. I couldn't predict with certainty how much it would take out over the course of a month.

As such, a range of possible values for savings isn't acceptable in a zero-based budget. You plan for an amount, not an amount plus or minus something. You plan for exactly $300, not “somewhere in the neighborhood of $300.”

It's an issue of control, really. I mentioned above that I hardly missed the money when Change pulled it out. But when we went over our expenses to create a reasonable zero-based budget, we found that there were a bunch of other things that we hardly missed in our spending.

And those other things that we were hardly missing were costing us, quite a bit.

For now, we're going to control all of the money

Change was perfect for us a few months ago. It matched the kind of budgeting we did, which was very fluid and broad-stroke.

I'm sure it's often the case where changing behavior requires a swing past where things eventually end up. Whereas for the past few months we were letting the app “sneak away” our money into savings, for the next few months we'll be planning every dollar, in advance, every month. We now have an amount that is going to savings, whereas before we saw where things ended up at the end of the month. Maybe at some point, we'll be saving enough each month that we can count on Change pulling out less than that amount, and then we make up the difference between our budgeted amount and the amount Change pulls out some other way.

But for where we are now, we need to experience the peace that we have a plan for every dollar for the month. And that means pausing a downright effective algorithmic auto-saving robotic overlord. One that I was happy to trust.