Monthly pay forcing more into debt. Campaign for weekly pay for lower incomes.

geordie_joe

amg1712 wrote: »

amg1712 wrote: »

The monthly pay-check, becomes feast then famine within days.

And if you got paid weekly you'd have 4 feasts and 4 famines per month.

Feasts and famines are caused when people spend their money when they get it and don't keep some for later. If you are doing that with your monthly pay you will do it with your weekly pay too.

amg1712 wrote: »

If you worked for 16 hours a week on minimum wage, do you think you could wait till the end of each month?

I work 17 hours for 13p above the minimum wage and I get along just fine, always have money left at the end of the month. Not much usually, but always something. Admittedly, I live on my own, am debt free, and have learned a lot about saving money from the people in here.

amg1712 wrote: »

My view would be to make it compulsory for employers to pay weekly to all those earning under £25,000 a year.

Don't force me to be paid in a way I don't want just because you can't manage your money.

If you want to be paid weekly, open another 3 bank accounts, put 25% of your wage in each of your 4 accounts and use a different account each week.

teabelly

The low paid need to learn how to budget and stick to it. There's the same amount of money whether it turns up once a month or once a week. What catches out the weekly paid is forgetting that there are 52 weeks in a year not 48 so you have to spend less than the 1/4 of what is left over from a month's incomings each week to keep on track.

wannabehermit

If you struggle with keeping your finances in order you'll struggle whether you're paid weekly, monthly, fortnightly or 4-weekly (or any other way your employer fancies paying you).

I personally prefer weekly, but that's probably because all of the jobs I had between the age of 15 & 28 paid me weekly. My ex was also paid weekly, so it's just what I'm used to. I learnt to budget with my money coming in on a weekly basis so that's what I find easiest. However I now get a bit of everything and I still manage perfectly well. DH's wages are monthly, mine are 4-weekly (personally hate 4-weekly wages with a passion, but I just use that for childcare and so it's only in my bank for a matter of hours and doesn't mess up my budgeting), plus we get some benefits weekly and some fortnightly. So we have money coming in all over the place but I manage perfectly well, and that's because I have the ability to budget, the ability to make sure that the money is where it needs to be on the days it needs to be. For people who can't do that it will be a struggle whether they get their money every 7 days or every 31(ish!) days. There are more important things that government need to be bringing in than forcing companies to pay employees at a certain time.

lobbyludd

in my youth I was paid both weekly as a temp and monthly in a salary on the same annual amount. Except for the first month, weekly was far and away harder: direct debits/utility bills fall at awkward times, it is very difficult to bulk buy in even a small way to save money, or take advantage of deals etc, because it comes in dribs and drabs, and if you lose your job there are a mere few days before you are peniless, with no time to find other work or adjust your budget.

tbh I think weekly wages keep people in poverty, forced to pay higher prices, etc.

pillion

Although I largely agree with all the above comments about learning to budget I think the main problem for many is that there are now too many jobs paying NMW and NMW just isn't enough to live on.

babymoo

I work 12 hours a week at minimum wage and get paid monthly. All my bills are paid every month before anything else. It is all about being strong with yourself, everything goes out on the same day for me and I know how much needs to be in the bank on that date so long as I don't touch that I am sorted.

If I was to be paid weekly I would get a lot more confused. You can do a lot more with a monthly wage than a weekly 1.

miamoo

We get paid monthly, and its so much easier to manage than when my OH was on weekly pay. Rent,CT all the utility bills, shopping comes out the day after we get paid. I manage whats left by mentally dividing by 4, so I work to a budget.

Why dont people who are struggling get there monthly pay put into a 'main' account, where DD's are taken from.
Divide the remainder into 4. Set up a standing order each week, to transfer this money into a seperate account for daily spends, which they have a card for.
Why cant they do this for themselves, rather than someone force weekly pay onto everyone, just because some cant budget themselves.
I know someone who has weekly benefits, and they are still skint 3 days later, not because they dont get much money because they dont budget.

justcat

I'm finally moving into permanent work after 3 tears of contracting. I will now be paid monthly. For me I'm happy that I can set up a direct debit or standing order for the first of the month as I'll get paid on the last day of the month.
This makes maintaining my finances so much easier for me.

WestonDave

Surely the ideal solution if the problem is the day to day spending, is to be paid monthly, leave what you need for direct debits etc in one bank account where they are all taken from, and have a weekly standing order to a second account for day to day spendingas miamoo says above. Having weekly pay solves one problem by creating another (the need to set money aside for monthly expenses) - it doesn't actually ultimately solve anything. I get paid what most people would regard as decent pay, but we still run the two accounts system.

hate-banks

I still don't see what the problem is being paid monthly! The only thing you have to do is to budget everything before you start getting paid monthly!

I found I was spending way more being paid weekly than monthly, because when you're paid weekly, you know you'll get more money in 7 days a the max so you go ahead and buy things whereas when you are paid monthly, you have xx amount of pounds left for the month and you know you won't have more, so you spend less and tend to be wiser!

Last thing, you talk about minimum wage in all paragraphs and then you talk about a £25000 salary!!! Since when £25000 is the minimum wage???