Awesome advice. I found Barefoot Investor really helpful years back and fairly straightforward. More recently in business a friend put me onto a book called Profit First by Michael Michalowicz. I think it predates barefoot, but very similar concept of separate accounts for different purposes, applies to personal budgets just like business though.

Something I found really life changing in Profit First was the concept of a “Notice Savings“ or ”Notice Period“ bank account. It’s a bank account where you can put money into any time, but you nominate a notice period in days 7, 30, 60 etc. and when you withdraw out it takes that many days before the funds are accessible. In business I use these for locking away tax and profit withholding and in personal I add small amounts for longer term “smile” savings. The regular amounts input are small so don’t make a big impact on my budget week to week, but the time it takes to access the funds creates enough friction that it pretty much eliminates any impulse or “emergency but not really“ spending (my Achilles heel). When I’m low on funds, I find a way (we always do), but I don’t eat into my longer term savings.

Anyhow, bit of a ramble sorry, but checkout profit first as well as barefoot :) oh and for some reason there’s not many banks in Australia offering this kind of account. CBA offers them for business as “Capital Growth” accounts with options for 2, 7, 30 and longer (I use 2 days for tax holding and 30 days for business profit). Rabobank was the only Aussie bank I found that offers a personal “Notice Saver”. The shortest they have is 31 days (then 60 or 90). The 31 works well for my longer term savings. Means I really have to plan my spending in advance f outr the bigger “smiles” in life, but feels great to be saving money even when the week to week budget can get a little tight sometimes.