In a mess with budgeting - help!

Sarahlou_2

Hi guys

Hoping you experts can help me. I get paid every four weeks and my husand gets paid every week. All our direct debits are monthly......

I have been on the budget planner and we have enough to cover bills etc but for some reason, come the end of the month when the biggies come out we never have enough in!

One of the obvious problems is that when I get paid we think "whooo hooo we're rich" and have a few treats :rotfl: but I was wondering if any one had any suggestions regarding my direct debits. Can they be set four weekly so they'd come out when I get paid?

Sorry if I sound stupid :rolleyes:

sammie383

Hiya!

From a couple who have went from being paid weekly each to being paid monthly each, the best advice I can give is the following,

Try and set all your direct debits to come out round about the same time, we have managed to do this for ours and they all come out on or around the 20th.

Do you have a seperate bank account for just for bills? This is what we set up and every month we credit it with enough to cover those bills all month.

As one of you gets paid weekly and the other "monthly" I would calculate what all your outgoing DD's are, and then divide it by 4, the answer you get will be how much you need to put in the "bill account" every week between you.

Set up a SO, so that you never forget to transfer the money over.

We've found that we ad an extra £10 onto the money we use for DD's everymonth and then we end up with a good buffer in the account incase anything goes up one month.

HTH
Sammie x

Rafter

Used to have this problem with being paid 4 weekly, although December was great when you got paid twice!

Problem is you need to save up this buffer.

You won't persuade your bill companies to change, because most people are paid monthly.

So sammie is right, you need a system to make sure that the right of money is in the right account each month by setting up a bills account. In the month that you are paid twice you need to tell yourself that that extra pay packet needs to last the whole year not be spent in that month - unless like me it came in December and was used to pay for Christmas!

R.

Charmothurlian

Hi there,

The way I would do this is:
Firstly, work out how much you and your husband earn on average per cal. month. The way to do this (assuming both wages are fixed amounts) is: multiply your wage by 13 to give a yearly figure, then multiply your husband's wage by 52 to give HIS yearly pay and add the two together. Now divide by 12. That gives you an average calendar monthly amount.

Add together all your monthly dd's, and subtract that total from the average monthly figure. That's how much you can spend every month while leaving enough in the account to cover the dd's.

If you can, try to spend a little less than you have available and build up the account until you have the equivalent of at least one month's average pay in reserve. That way, your income for one month becomes your expenditure for the next.

getmore4less

Charmothurlian wrote: »

Hi there,

The way I would do this is:
Firstly, work out how much you and your husband earn on average per cal. month. The way to do this (assuming both wages are fixed amounts) is: multiply your wage by 13 to give a yearly figure, then multiply your husband's wage by 52 to give HIS yearly pay and add the two together. Now divide by 12. That gives you an average calendar monthly amount.

Add together all your monthly dd's, and subtract that total from the average monthly figure. That's how much you can spend every month while leaving enough in the account to cover the dd's.

If you can, try to spend a little less than you have available and build up the account until you have the equivalent of at least one month's average pay in reserve. That way, your income for one month becomes your expenditure for the next.

But his will leave you short when things come up that are not on monthly DD.

Add up ALL expences for the year think of everything weekly, monthly, annual, car insurance,TAX,MOTs, holidays, presents etc. take this off the anual income and that is what is left /52 for weekly spends.

Allthough not budgeting properly one option that might work if your 4 weekly pay would cover most monthly/anual stuff is to set this aside and have an extra 4 weeks pay to cover extras you forgot about.

Then use the hubbies weekly pay for weekly things if the 4weeks pay is not enough transfer some from the weekly pay and spend less.

Planning(setting a busget) and tracking are the key to making the cash flow work.

The year plan is a good start but you do need to think longer term as well.