Why I don't automate my ETF investing

It's pretty typical in the personal finance space to recommend to people to automate their investing. The reasoning goes that if you set it and forget it then you won't spend the money and you also won't forget to do this "boring" task each month. But I have taken a completely opposite position that seeks to create a different kind of non-boring relationship with investing.

Each month, I have already set aside the amount of money that I plan to invest and then I spend what is left (rather than spending first and saving what's left). I manually move this money transfer from my checking account into my brokerage account. From there, I select the investment, "add to basket" in a sense, and complete the purchase.

But why not automate this "mundane task"?

Because our brains get this so-called "dopamine hit" from buying stuff in shopping carts. It makes us happy. Imagine going to Zalando or Amazon, finding the thing you want to buy, adding it to your shopping cart, and then hitting "buy now". Doesn't it feel really good? I'm doing exactly that. But rather than buying useless clothing and gadgets, I'm buying my financial freedom. I'm buying future time. If I were to automate my monthly investing, I would have less of a happy relationship with that outflow of money. Byy manually executing my investing, I'm treating my investments just like any dopamine generating consumer purchase.

Mindset shifted. I love it.

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