I'm finding it hard...

skintchick

I can't help with the dates thing, but I am paid monthly and have stuff going out all over the place, and I write on a bit of paper (very old school this!) what I have available to spend on food, petrol, and treats, and clip it into my diary. Then, every time I spend something or take cash out I write it down and deduct it from the total.

THat way, I never look at my balance and think 'ooh, I have lots of money' and then spend my bill money, and it helps focus my mind when I see a lovely pair of shoes....

Perhaps that would help you? I know that since starting it a couple of months ago I have not been overdrawn for the first time in years!!

*Sparkle*_3

Thank you skint chick!

brokenwings

thats how i do it too skintchick

every payday i deduct from my bank balance all my bill payments and debt repayments - then divide the remainder between a) emergency fund b) grocery fund c) petrol fund d) little extras

that all gets listed in my note book and every time i spend a penny ( a copper one!! ) it gets deducted from one of my columns

that way i know what i have and what i can or cant spend

works for me so far!

skintchick

Simple but effective, I say, although at the moment there is no emergency fund well, what else are well-off parents and brothers for? lol

Bargain_Rzl

If it's practical, couldn't you really tighten your belts for a little while and see whether you can get into a situation where you have all your money in advance of the month? So the month's budget would start on your payday, and he'd be contributing the previous four weeks' wages. This way, it should make very little difference what day your direct debits go out.

Your debts (and the increasing interest on them) may make this non-cost-effective for the time being, but it is quite a handy thing to aim for in the long term. It also means that if OH is ever then in a situation where he gets transferred to monthly pay, you won't suffer hardship for the first few weeks until payday.

Meanwhile, there is an advantage to weekly pay. 4 weeks is not a month. Four times a year (or five if 1st Jan is a Thursday) you get five Thursdays in the month. If you treat 4 weeks' pay as a monthly income, the fifth payday can be treated like a bonus every time it comes around. (BTW, because of the difference between 4 weeks and a month, jw1096's calculation of what each of you should be contributing to the bills account is mathematically incorrect unless you think of it in the way I've suggested).

Bargain_Rzl

skintchick wrote:

I write on a bit of paper (very old school this!) what I have available to spend on food, petrol, and treats, and clip it into my diary. Then, every time I spend something or take cash out I write it down and deduct it from the total.

THat way, I never look at my balance and think 'ooh, I have lots of money' and then spend my bill money, and it helps focus my mind when I see a lovely pair of shoes....

I have a spreadsheet which shows uncleared items and payments due out alongside actual bank balances, as well as showing how much I've got in each "budget pot". I budget over the course of the calendar year, tending to have a tight-ish cashflow period in the summer (because the majority of my annual outgoings and general heavy spending are weighted more towards the summer) as well as periods when I have more money than I need to spend in the month. I tend to look at my current and savings accounts as a single block of cash, so basically everything I have spare at any time of the year is sitting in my savings account earning decent interest. For this reason, the balance of my savings account is almost always higher than the actual amount I have earmarked as "savings".

BWZN93

Bargain_Rzl wrote:

(BTW, because of the difference between 4 weeks and a month, jw1096's calculation of what each of you should be contributing to the bills account is mathematically incorrect unless you think of it in the way I've suggested).

Very true!! I was thinking of monthly incomes!! The extra fifth could be used as extra debt repayments if you budget for every month using the 4 weeks and the monthly salary. At least I think so anyway! (my brain isnt working - ive been doing numbers all day )

Jo xx

Bargain_Rzl

That's what I used to do when I was on weekly pay. I'd recently graduated and didn't have enough slack in my budget to work a month in advance as I suggested to the OP, and I was on a salary of about £11.5k which is very low for London. I budgeted 4-weekly, which only just covered all the essentials, so the extra payday every 3 months covered luxuries - theatre tickets, clothes, Christmas and so on.

It didn't work out as quite a whole week's extra pay, because I budgeted for certain things (like food and basic pocket money) on a weekly basis so these still had to be deducted.