The Wealthsimple feature I wish I discovered sooner..

I was helping my girlfriend set up her Wealthsimple investing account one day recently, when I stumbled across a feature I genuinely didn't know existed.

And honestly, I was kind of shocked! :o

Within the last year, I distinctly remember looking into whether there was a way to automate Interac e-Transfers through a bank. At the time, I came to the conclusion that it either wasn't possible or at least wasn't something any of the banks I used offered. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Wealthsimple lets you not only schedule e-Transfers, but also make them recurring.

Now, I know this isn't exactly the kind of feature that's going to make headlines, but for someone who spends far too much time thinking about budgeting systems, bank accounts, and how money moves from one place to another, this was actually a pretty exciting discovery!!

For the longest time, I had a few recurring personal payments that I was manually sending every month.

Now, they weren't difficult to manage at all because they were always going to the same people for the same amounts, but they were still something I had to remember to do (and I'm big on saving mental energy where I can!). Every month I'd get to a certain date and send the transfers, and move on with my day.

The bigger benefit for me came from the way my finances are currently structured. Because of Wealthsimple's direct deposit perks, most of my income lands there first. However, several of my recurring personal obligations are paid through e-Transfer, such as rent. Up until now, that meant money would arrive in Wealthsimple, I'd move some of it elsewhere, and then I'd send those e-Transfers manually.

Now I can simply leave the money where it is and have those transfers happen automatically. :D

That might sound like a small change to most, but I think a lot of personal finance is really about removing unnecessary friction. The fewer things I have to remember each month, the easier it becomes to stay consistent with the systems I've already built, AND enjoy my life!

It's the same reason I automate savings and investing wherever possible. Once something becomes predictable, I'd rather spend five minutes setting it up once than spend two minutes remembering it every month forever.

While exploring the feature, I was actually surprised by how flexible it is.

Wealthsimple lets you choose the exact date you want the transfer to go out, and then decide whether it should repeat weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.

So this is useful even if you just want to schedule one single e-transfer to someone without it having to recurr. You can set it and forget it!

Really the only thing you have to make sure of, after that point, is that your account should have sufficient funds for when you scheduled the transfer.

And so since most of my pay already lands on WealthSimple, I can now leave those funds sitting in the account for longer and have the transfers automatically sent when needed.

It's funny because I discovered this completely by accident while helping someone else.

I really wasn't actively looking for the feature, and yet it ended up solving a problem I'd been dealing with for quite a while.

So if you're a Wealthsimple user and you're still manually sending the same e-Transfers every month, it might be worth taking a look!

From talking to other people on social media, apparently this feature has been sitting there waiting for me all along haha. I can't wait to see what I'll stumble upon next!

Thank you for reading and I hope you found this helpful! You're free to use any of the links I shared in this blog as you'd like. Some are affiliated and will go a small but long way to help support the blog! :)