.png)
Outsourcing daily financial tasks gives you more time and keeps you informed about the details of your finances. This has been true already before Covid19, but during those unprecedented times, this service is becoming even more valuable - and can be provided in a safe manner - remotely.
Three of the most typical client types for Daily money Managers are busy families, busy professionals, and retirees. Read on to learn how they can benefit from hiring a Daily Money Manager, the most important services and how they can be provided - all under the spotlight of the current circumstances of the ongoing battle against Covid19.
Busy Families
Covid19 has a dramatic impact on the life of families: Whether you have young children who need a lot of support with home-schooling or teenagers who challenge you when being stuck at home.
During "normal" times the calendar is controlled by driving the children to their hobbies, sitting on the sidelines of soccer games and other youth sports events, meeting with PTAs and organizing related events, and meeting with friends and families. Since those activities are either completely canceled or drastically reduced, we have more time now, right? Well not really, now we have to deal with the children being at home all the time. This means juggling our work life and career with the homeschooling and care needs of our children. Some of us are fortunate enough of being able to work at a flexible schedule from home, others have to hire external help. But for all of us, this is a completely new situation and requires a lot of time, all on top of the regular household tasks like grocery shopping (often takes longer now due to Covid19 restrictions), cleaning laundry chores, cooking (requires also more time now, due to closed/reduced restaurants and school cafeterias). And far too often, the fear of losing the workplace makes us working longer hours and we easily get exhausted. So more then ever, we are lacking time for doing everything needed.
To make the situation even worse we cannot hope anymore that this is only a short-time overload like we assumed this spring. As the number of Covid19-cases is still high, most schools remain completely online for the foreseeable future. So families need to find a way to have a sustainable workload. Hiring a Daily Money Manager is one way of freeing up some time - even if you belong to the rare species who enjoy doing financial paperwork under normal circumstances. A Daily Money Manager can become your alter geo for your daily finances, this gives you not only time but frees your mind from the burden of ongoing tasks like:
Create and track a family budget
Review bills, credit card and bank statements
Ensure bills are paid in time
Make payroll payments for household employees, if applicable
Track the transactions on your bank accounts and credit cards - and notify you if something suspicious is showing up or if there are insufficient account balances
Help to identify potential saving areas (subscriptions, clothes, online games, unnecessary online shopping)
Organize your financial documents digitally
Review and adapt family spending to the new situation
Track how your teens are spending money
Facilitating money discussions among the family (either parents only, or including the older children)
Busy Professionals
Usually, the biggest challenge for busy professionals is the amount of work travel, often organized in a very short time frame and therefore interfering with the personal life.
Now not only work travel has been disappearing nearly completely, but even the commute for many of us is also history. Nowadays many of us work from home only. At first glance, this seems to bring a nearly endless amount of additional time and flexibility. But stop, it is not that easy! Working 100% from home means spending endless hours on zoom meetings, often involving people in different time zones. There are even more meetings than we were used during the "normal" work-life and it gets more challenging to organize the work and keep in touch with the involved parties - you cannot just walk to their desk or have a cup of coffee with them. So many of us are working longer hours to complete all the tasks and sometimes also out of fear to lose the workplace. Already now some studies are show that people often get into burnout. So having a good work-life balance has become incredibly more difficult now.
One way of taking some stress out of the desk-bound life is by hiring a Daily Money Manager. You can fully focus on your work life and you don't have to spend time with administrative work for your finances. You can rest assured it is taken care of by a professional. A Daily Money Manager will handle ongoing tasks like:
Create and track a budget
Review bills, credit card and bank statements
Ensure bills are paid in time
Make payroll payments for household employees, if applicable
Track the transactions on your bank accounts and credit cards - and notify you if something suspicious is showing up or if there are insufficient account balances
Help to identify potential saving areas (subscriptions, clothes, travel-related services, and recurring fees)
Review your credit score and check for signs of fraud
Organize your financial documents digitally
Review and adapt your spending to the new situation (fewer costs for traveling, but more for home-related services)
Retirees
The toll of the Covid19-threat on the retirees has been huge: Not only are you in the risk group of developing severe symptoms in case of an infection, but your life has become very isolated. Visitors and out of house activities have become rare. Many seniors are not anymore able to see their families, sometimes new grandchildren have been born months ago and you were not able to take them into your arms. The main communication to the outside is via phone and video calls.
A Daily Money Manager cannot help you with seeing your family but give peace of mind as your finances are taken care of. This gives an extra layer of protection against possible scams and frauds. Seniors have always been a target for such activities, and now with Codiv19 many now criminal actions have been reported.
A Daily Money Manager will take care of ongoing tasks like:
Review bills, credit card and bank statements
Ensure bills are paid in time
Make payroll payments for household employees, if applicable
Review your mail and sort out unsolicited offers and other not relevant correspondence
Track the transactions on your bank accounts and credit cards - and notify you if something suspicious is showing up or if there are insufficient account balances
Track charitable donations for your tax records
Review your credit score and check for signs of fraud
Organize your financial documents digitally
Review medical bills and explanation of benefits statements
How can you find a Daily Money Manager you can trust?
In contrast to Financial Advisors do not need a license to practice and the title of a Daily Money Manager is not protected. The best start is searching in the directory of the Association of Daily Money Managers (AADMM). All the professionals listed here are following the code of ethics and adhere to a high standards of practice.
You might first select a couple of them and get in touch with. You want to find a person you can connect well on a personal level too. Money is a very personal issue and it requires a big amount of trust having somebody handling your finances - so ask many questions until you feel ready to proceed!
... and how does this all work remotely?
So far Daily Money Managers were often visiting their clients in person and handled the work on site. But luckily technology is a tremendous help nowadays and it is possible to provide those services from a safe distance by working remotely.
SDS Smart Daily Services has been serving clients remotely already before the pandemic, so I am well prepared for this mode of operation. Here is how the onboarding process for a new client works:
During a first conversation (hold as a phone or video call) we will together assess your situation and define the level of services required.
Then I will work together with you through video meetings, phone calls, and emails to get all the information needed for the initial set-up, and we will define the communication channels we use for our partnership. Depending on your situation this phase includes some workshop session e.g. for setting up a budget or for analyzing your spending.
In the rare case that we will need a physical meeting to proceed, we will meet outside only (this can be around your house: on your porch, deck, or in your garden) so we can keep a safe physical distance.
I will get the systems for monitoring your accounts and assisting with bill pays up and running
We will define the level of detail you wish to get within your reports, and I will send you those on a weekly base.
In case you have information available in paper format only, we will define a safe way for the document exchange.
Check my web-page for more details of the Daily Money Management Services provided by SDS Smart Daily Services or contact me in case you have any further questions about the work of a Daily Money Manager in general.
Comments