Today’s task:
Set up ACH payments
If you are already in business, it’s important to separate your personal from your business finances. I’m talking two different bank accounts, honey. No pulling a little from here to pay there…no ifs, ands, or butts about it.
Keep your monies separate and you (and your CPA) will thank yourself later.
Today’s task has to do with ACH payments – otherwise known as direct deposit. This is something that we just got set up through my consulting work, which I wanted to get arranged for when I started working abroad. No more depositing checks at the bank or making mobile deposits through my phone (at least when it comes to my consulting money).
Today I wrote a check to myself for $500 from my Mezclada business checking account, after having put 35% in savings for taxes. Within a couple of hours it was approved, $225 was immediately available, and the rest will become available within the next two days.
I made sure to put a couple of blank checks in random spots in my luggage, just in case I got robbed or something. 😀 Writing these checks is the most efficient way to pay myself right now. But in the near future, I’m likely to set up a Melio account to pay myself.
I had a lovely conversation with a friend today and we talked about this idea of making plans, and when people flake out on you. He talked about how culturally, people here in Santa Teresa don’t work a lot. They have a lot of free time, and not as much structure. This can lead to as much spontaneity in plans as changing them altogether, last minute.
In less than a week, my mindset around work has completely shifted.
It’s opened my mind to this whole other way of being that evolves around all that life has to offer and enjoying the company of those around you. It reminds me of a saying I would often hear from the residents at the retirement home – “Don’t work too hard!” It’s funny because I would always laugh it off and keep going with whatever I was doing. But then you realize that they say it because they know from experience that life is short and that there’s so much more to it than how we choose to get paid or where the money comes from, if we don’t have a choice.
This is something I took away from a previous relationship and still carry with me to this day – that life is meant to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest, not spent slaving away just to make a few more pennies to put away in the bank and maybe enjoy during retirement. What is retirement, really? I feel like it’s when my body no longer wants to give, not when I’ve turned 65. It’s closer to the 85 year mark, when my brain perhaps starts to deteriorate and my limbs can’t quite keep up with all that I want to do with them to stay active.
I made this comment to a stranger on the beach the other day, and feel like it’s worth repeating here – I’ve never seen so many gorgeous people in one geographic location in my entire life. Literally, everyone around here is sculpted, tan, with sun-kissed hair. Hydrophilic – that means water-loving, right? That’s what I would cal these people and the entire community. Santa Teresa is hydrophilic.
My point is that the people who live the longest are those whose lives are filled with joy, laughter, movement, and a proper diet. And it’s so much easier to create that for yourself when you’re surrounded by people for whom that is their reality and their culture. Every. Single. Day.
Today’s task is all about taking a step to make it easier for you to get paid, so that you can worry less about the money and spend more time doing the things you love with the people around you. Riff on the task however you’d like, whatever it looks like for you.
Keep up the good work and continue chugging along. You got this!
