I automated my money

Disclaimer: This post is two years old now. I updated it the best I could.

A few months ago, I signed up for bunq, one of these new neo-banks that offer you all the services of a bank through an app on your smartphone.

I’ve been eyeing neo-banks for a while, as they offer functionalities no other bank in the country where I live (Luxembourg) seems to want to adopt. Namely multiple sub-accounts, automation and API integrations. Also, and this is due to how my brain works, a card that — while it functions as a credit card technically, i.e. let me use it online — is much more akin to a debit card using the money in your bank account immediately, and not only by the end of the month.

⚠️ I am no financial expert. I don't know shit about money. So don’t take anything I explain here as a suggestion to do yourself. All I know I got from books and experts, so listen to them (with a grain of salt, of course) and not me. Seriously!

bunq offers all this and more. Between them, Revolut, N26 and some other apps I am too lazy to name here, my choice fell on bunq for two reasons: Up to 25 sub-accounts and a pretty great API.

Let’s talk a bit more about bunq in detail.

What I like

First, a disclaimer. Bunq is not my main bank account. I still own the traditional bank account I had for at least 20 years. This is where my salary comes in, and the most important bills get paid (mortgage, insurance, etc.).

I use bunq as a daily expenditure account. All the money I got there is for everything that’s not a fixed cost. The same goes for my fiancée, and we own a few shared sub-accounts.

In all, I have 14 of these sub-accounts on bunq, half of them shared. Starting with my personal ones:

Personal accounts

Shared account

As with my main account, I share a bank account at my traditional bank for everything that is a fixed cost with my fiancée.

What follows below is — again, like with me — what we consider non-essentials, or whatever we want to budget better by using multiple accounts.

Multiple cards

I have five cards through bunq, two digital ones, only used online (see above), and three physical ones: my primary credit card, made out of metal (though this one is on its way right now), a second credit that I use for the shared accounts only, and a third debit card as a backup for countries or stores that don’t accept credit cards.

What is excellent about cards from bunq — and I have to admit I have no clue if any other bank does this — is that you can have up to two different PIN codes per card. What this allows is you to be able to use two sub-accounts with one single card. Above in the lists, I shared what I have the cards usually mapped, too.

But it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience to quickly change the account a card uses. I’ve done this a few times by now, and I am surprised by how fast this works every time. Compare this to when I tried to change my card limit at my old bank — because I was about to buy something expensive — I had to do this several days in advance.

About automation

Many accounts mean I have a lot of money moving left and right regularly. bunq has a feature to automatically send money from one account to another whenever you have funds coming in.

But thanks to fantastic API support, I can use a second app called Flow to create automation on top of my bank account.

What this app does is that, depending on a few triggers, it sends money from one account to another.

For example, I have one flow which splits money from the main account to all the sub-accounts at the tap of one button. As I don’t always get paid on the same day and thus can’t make the wire from my OG account to bunq on the same day, I do it manually. But then, whenever the money hits bunq, I tap one button, and everything gets split to all the different accounts I mentioned above.

I also have another automation, which goes over a few of my accounts (i.e. going out, shared restaurant, and whenever something is on the main account because someone paid back something) and, at the end of the month, tops up the different savings accounts with whatever was remaining on that account for that month.

With Flow, you can have up to three free, basic automation, and if you want to go for crazy stuff, you can subscribe for three eurodollars per month. Flow also supports other banks, so you don’t need bunq for this.

A few downsides

Unfortunately, nothing is perfect, and neither is bunq. Here are a few annoying things:

Conclusion

I like bunq. It’s my new main bank account for most of my daily expenditures. But I feel like I haven’t even scratched most of the available features. The APIs are crazy extensive, and I want to see how far I can take them.

For example, I want to see if I can find a tracking app that works great and can hook up to bunq — or maybe even write my own in Python.

I also want to see if I can create an automation which checks my savings account, and whenever it reaches a certain amount, it sends the remaining money to my investment app and buys some stock.

bunq has freed up a lot of mental energy for how I use my money. Thanks to all the automation and different sub-accounts, I never have to do the math mentally to figure out if I can go for one more beer or get this one game on sale on Steam. All it takes is a glance, and I have the answer.

A funny side-effect is that I also have more money I can use for things. So technically, I can now buy more shit. But because I only have one account dedicated to offline purchases, I don't because I don't put a lot of money on that one.

But it still takes some mental power not to use the account meant to pay the personal trainer to buy two extra-large pizzas. So far, I have been strong!