Budget Help

[macdiesel]

I am trying to come up with a simple budget. The problem I am having is I get paid bi-monthly (15th & last day of month) and my wife gets paid bi-weekly. Having the bi-monthly in there really throws me off. I have a "bill" checking account where a portion of each of our checks is direct deposited so the bills are covered every month. The hard part is how to budget the rest of the income for all expenses other than bills. To me it is hard to budget that money when it lines up where we get paid near the same time. Budgeting for 2 weeks is much tougher than for 1 week. We have about $1000/month for these other expenses which seems like plenty but I can't figure how to budget it. Does anyone have any good suggestions on how to budget with these pay schedules?

[jpg7n16]

Have you ever written out a monthly budget on paper? Or used software to create one?

I base my budget on the monthly amount. And I get paid bi-weekly like you.


Budgeting is more of planning the month in advance on paper. (I use software)

[macdiesel]

I have not ever written out a budget, but what gets me is I get paid bi-monthly not bi-weekly. So sometimes it is 2.5 weeks between checks. What software do you use?

[jpg7n16]

The simplest thing to do is figure out your yearly income divided by 12. Or if you're trying to do weekly, divide by 52.

So if you make $50k/year - then you make $961.53/week.


I use Personal Budget Software - Finance Software for Windows, Mac & Linux

[littleroc02us]

It depends how specific you get, my wife and I get paid bi-weekly. Our budget is setup for bi-weekly, we use Excel with tabs that have basically 24 dates and use formulas to calculate income - Expenses. There are categories for expenses say (A1-A35) that are tallied up to equal bills and categories for (my wife's income, my income and extra) which is tallied up to equal income. The result is that we sit down bi-monthly right before the pay comes in and write down repeating bills and amounts and everything else that comes into play and then attempt to zero out the budget so that every dollar has a name. Each year gets better it isn't perfect, but we are quite comfortable because we know how much to spend on each item and what to save. I can send you a sample.....

[ActYourWage]

You need to track everything you spend (everything) for one month, then make out a spending plan (budget). You will be surprised where your money goes once it is tracked. Also, do you have any debt, emergency fund, retirement, etc? These will play a big role in how you need to budget. Once you have tracked your spending for one month, as someone else mentioned, assign every dollar a name. In other words, before the month begins, virtually spend (or assign) the money on your expense categories, mortgage, rent, utilities, gas, food,etc....Then at the end of the month, you will see where you need more or less for each category. You can adjust each month. It takes about 3-4 months to get this down, so don't worry about making it perfect at first.

BTW, I use Google Docs spreadsheet as my spending plan so I can access it from anywhere with Internet access.

[disneysteve]

I am trying to come up with a simple budget. The problem I am having is I get paid bi-monthly (15th & last day of month) and my wife gets paid bi-weekly.

As others have said, this really isn't a problem at all because your budget should be done monthly. It doesn't matter if you get paid every week, every other week, twice a month or once a month. Follow what ActYourWage spelled out and you'll be in great shape.

[buildmybudget]

Mac, I built a website to help users just like yourself solve the problem that you have. The problem isn't necessarily your monthly budget but moreso how to help manage your cash flow and how to schedule out which paychecks you should use to pay which bills. I'm trying to test a new product where I help users create a custom budget. If you'd like to beta test it for free, please feel free to send me an email.

[skydivingchic]

As has been mentioned you will need to spend a few months tracking every penny you spend in order to get to a realistic budget. Ultimately however if you are worried about the timing between paychecks and bills, that means you are living paycheck to paycheck. The solution to that will be to build up one month's worth of reserve into your checking account. It takes time, but it makes a HUGE difference in cash flow and is absolutely worth the work. So, figure out how much you spend each month - it should include things like setting aside money for non-monthly expenses (car maintenance, car registration, gifts, subscriptions, insurance, etc) as well as the monthly stuff like mortgage/rent, utilities, gas, groceries, etc. That will be the amount you need to set aside. So if your expenses are $4000 per month, start saving as much as you can each month toward that goal. Once you hit that goal, it will no longer matter when you get paid in relation to when bills are due. Your paychecks in January will simply sit in your account until February 1, when you can pay whatever is due, when it is due.

I use Mvelopes for my budgeting and swear by it. I've been a loyal customer for ~4 years now. However, it is not free and that turns a lot of people off. DBF uses You Need a Budget, which he really likes and it is cheaper than Mvelopes. You can also use Excel if you prefer.

I get paid biweekly but was trying to budget monthly, so I had to worry about when bills were due versus when I got paid. Once I built up the one month cushion, things are soooo much easier. If anything happens that my paycheck is not deposited on time or something, no big deal - I've got a month's cushion to figure it out. I've also been able to cash-flow some smaller "emergencies" since I have a month to deal with problems.

[doxie]

I am in a similar situation, I get paid biweekly, my partner gets paid monthly. I finally came up with a system that ensured that we have even cashflow all the time, instead of having peaks and valleys.

The first step, of course, was to figure out the budget, like others in this thread have suggested. I then set it up so that all of my bills are due the first of the month, when my partner gets paid. I use her entire paycheck for bills. That falls short of what we need. Then I take the shortfall, multiply it by 12, and divide by 26. That is the amount I need to take out of each of my paychecks to cover the monthly bills. The key is that instead of leaving that amount floating in checking, I have it automatically deposited into it's own savings account. At the beginning of the month I transfer the amount we need.

This actually sounds confusing now that I've written it, let me see if I can use an example.

Monthly bills: $5000
Partner monthly income: $3000
Shortfall: $2000

2000 x 12 = 24,000, divided by 26 = 923 (amount I need to use from each check to cover bills)

My biweekly income: $2000

Transfer $923 to savings, then we have $1077 to spend for 2 weeks on food, clothing, whatever isn't covered by "monthly bills."

These aren't the real numbers, but you get the idea. Or at least I hope so, maybe it is still confusing, sorry

[DebbieL]

I get paid bi-monthly and DH gets paid bi-weekly. I just input his net pay from a 2 paycheque month in our monthly budgets. Mine, being bi-monthly works out perfectly. Of course, with DH being bi-weekly there are 2 months where he gets paid 3 times. Those extra cheques just go to fun stuff like vacations. I don't bother working out his net pay over a whole year and dividing it by 12. The reality for most months is that he'll only get paid twice, and the couple months with an extra paycheque we just consider it "extra".

[littleroc02us]

keep it simple people, your not the gov't, budgeting is 20% math and 80% discipline. Once you've written up the incoming and outgoing by category, you already know where the money is going so all you have to do is spend it or save it. Don't make this hard. If you need to make an adjustment where the money is spent, have a meeting with your spouse and reallocate. It takes away all the stress to know that your covered...