AI and automation help you stay on top of your spending, but not if you aren’t keeping yourself under control via IrishTimesBiz
While AI advances aren’t there yet or accessible enough to the majority of us to hand over complete responsibility for our bank balances to a machine, there is something else that may help: automation.
Most of us are no stranger to direct debits and have long used them to take payments for debts, rent or bills straight from our account in order. They can be handy for those of us who might forget the due dates of the odd bill but still want to dodge late payment fees and disconnected services without having to use much mental energy.
An Post, N26 and Revolut offer accelerators which means you can multiply up to 10 times the amount of whatever money is rounded up and it will take that off the purchase and into a separate space. “For people who are busy and want to see everything on their phone in one place, probably the An Post app is the smartest one I’ve seen,” she said.While Eoin McGee, author and host of RTÉ’s How to be Good with Money, welcomes “anything new that gets people taking control of their finances”, automation may not be doing us any favours by making us think less.
“But if you’re going through your phone and looking at an spending average, it’s a brief fleeting moment” that may not have the same impact.As are direct debits or savings automations that could bounce as a result of not having enough funds in an account or a pay run being late.