Benefit payment dates/help please !

Mollycat13

It can be confusing with 4-weekly and monthly income and payments.

Karenx's reply is much the same as what we do.

I get my wages monthly, dh gets his 4-weekly (changing to weekly soon), cb goes in 4-weekly and ctc & wtc goes in weekly.
We have two bank accounts with the same bank and I transfer money between the accounts. I guess it would be easier to have standing orders though.

If most of your money coming in is 4-weekly and the bills are monthly, what you could do is count the 4-weekly money as if it is monthly. i.e. budget for having 12 payments coming in a year instead of 13. If you do it right, you could have one month a year where the 13th payment is extra money.

Hope that made sense.

spottyscarf

Yes it made sense, thanks a lot !

abby35

hi

would it be possible to put aside set amounts into a saving account then transfer it when needed for dd's. As i do all my banking online i find this great that way whats left i can spend without getting myself stuck halfway through etc.

Becles

My pay is erratic as I'm self employed so money dribbles in from various companies over the course of a month.

What I do is have all my earnings paid into a savings account, then at the end of the month I transfer it to my current account.

For example, the money I get paid in March will dribble in over the month, then on the 31st, I'll transfer it to my current account and that is what I'll live on in April.

At the beginning of each month, I write all the direct debits out of my account regardless of what day the money will be taken and work from my paper balance rather than the actual account balance. That way I never get a bounced direct debit, and I always know how much I have left to spend each month.

TOBRUK

Hi spottyscarf,

To try and be helpful here ... it may help if you took a few hours to look at your outgoings first of all. I have an A4 book and I rule out 6 colums:
DATE, DETAILS which is a wider space (who the payments is for and who you pay) INcome, OUTgoing, and BALANCE. The 6th colum is for any notes where I put down the dates each month my income comes in!

You write out one sheet of paper with a list - details/dates of all your outgoings and amount e.g. if you have Direct Debits list them all - from tv licence to utilities etc. Work out how much you have left over and how much you can afford to take out of your bank account each week - YOUR ALLOWANCE - WHICH YOU TAKE OUT ONCE A WEEK (pick a day) AND STICK TO IT.

After you work out your outgoings, minus it from your income (every 4 weeks) and divide what is left over by 4 - this is how much you can spend a week.

Remember you can change the date of your DDs to suit you so you can spread it out over the month to suit you.

Once you start listing all your spending (each day) in the A4 book you will be surprised how much you do spend - this helps you BUDGET.

Hope I've explained it so that you can understand. It works for me hope it helps!

KimYeovil

And to add to Tobruk's post - your allowance should be no more than two-thirds of what you work it out to be - the other third should be kept aside.