Budget: one person paid weekly, one paid monthly

greensalad

Hi everyone.

After discussion with my partner, we have decided to pool our income together into one pot.

I earn more than my partner. But I also have a) extra travel expenses and b) more debt than him (£15k vs his £4k)

Our monthly income is £6000.
Our monthly immediate obligations and inevitable savings come to £3780
We would like to give ourselves a "fun money" budget of £250 pm each.
This leaves us with £1720 left to service debts. We have agreed I will take 70% for my debts and he will take 30%.

The big problem I'm having is that I get paid weekly whereas he gets paid monthly. So get gets paid 22nd of the month, and I get paid every Thursday except for £400 which gets paid monthly.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to work this budget due to my weekly payments...

If we both got paid monthly around the same time, then ideally I would just go through the list, tick off every payment that I'm stashing, putting in bills account or elsewhere... but sadly we can't do that. For example if I need to put £354 towards my train travel for the month but I only get paid £838 a week then that is a huge dent...

The only thing I can thing of is that I essentially make my boyfriend's life work "weekly" too in that he will get his fun-money delivered weekly. Thus splitting up his income into a weekly allowance too.

Any advice appreciated. This is such a brainteaser!

HappyMJ

Keep a buffer of one months pay in your account and treat it as if it is paid monthly.

greensalad

That requires being able to save that much money though before starting budgeting. I don't have that kind of cash available without forgoing something else.

The only way I could think of doing it is to forego paying my debts (just handle the minimums) until I can build up that buffer. By my calculations that would take about 3-4 months.

MERFE

This is how I would do it

Joint account for all bills
Oh gets paid monthly and transfers all his wages into joint account minus his £250 and 30% of £1720

You are paid weekly and each week transfer all wages to joint account minus weekly equivilant of £250pm and weekly equivilant of 70% of £1720.

Helvetica_Van_Buren

- You both have your wages paid into your own (separate) bank accounts.
- Have a joint account for all joint bills.
- You both contribute half of the bill into the joint account.
- Be proactive: get your files in order and budget all the payments to be coming out of your joint account to make sure you both know how much money needs to be on a specific date.
- You take the money you need for your own travel and other items that are not joint (such as
your phone bill) out of the money left in your own bank account.
- Your partner does the same.
- Anything left in your own accounts is yours to spend or save as you see fit.

This is by the far the most simple and most fair way - the fact that somebody gets paid monthly or weekly or more or less than somebody shouldn't need to come into it (as long as everyone has enough money to meet their obligations).

greensalad

Helvetica_Van_Buren wrote: »

- You both have your wages paid into your own (separate) bank accounts.
- Have a joint account for all joint bills.
- You both contribute half of the bill into the joint account.
- Be proactive: get your files in order and budget all the payments to be coming out of your joint account to make sure you both know how much money needs to be on a specific date.
- You take the money you need for your own travel and other items that are not joint (such as
your phone bill) out of the money left in your own bank account.
- Your partner does the same.
- Anything left in your own accounts is yours to spend or save as you see fit.

This is by the far the most simple and most fair way - the fact that somebody gets paid monthly or weekly or more or less than somebody shouldn't need to come into it (as long as everyone has enough money to meet their obligations).

This is exactly what we do now. The problems come into play when we have belt-tightening months (I'm a contractor so sometimes I have a few weeks with no income and also sometimes my partner has extra travel expenditure). I guess we were trying to combine our income into one pot to give us more flexibility when either one of us has a dip.

HappyMJ

greensalad wrote: »

This is exactly what we do now. The problems come into play when we have belt-tightening months (I'm a contractor so sometimes I have a few weeks with no income and also sometimes my partner has extra travel expenditure). I guess we were trying to combine our income into one pot to give us more flexibility when either one of us has a dip.

As a contractor especially you should be getting some savings sorted to allow you to have time off or for between contracts so you can continue paying the bills.

You should have 3-6 months worth of expenses saved up as an emergency fund. If you've got high interest debts then go for the lower figure.

greensalad

HappyMJ wrote: »

As a contractor especially you should be getting some savings sorted to allow you to have time off or for between contracts so you can continue paying the bills.

You should have 3-6 months worth of expenses saved up as an emergency fund. If you've got high interest debts then go for the lower figure.

I am well aware, however my plan has always been to reduce my credit card bills but keep at least one open so that I can use that for emergencies. I have used it in the past when I didn't get paid for 3 weeks and did successfully pay it all back. If I saved money for quiet periods then I would probably put back my DFD by over a year.

getmore4less

Once a budget is set up properly when the money comes in does not matter as that is just a cash flow issue.

Do the planning for a full year that will tell you how much you have to spend in each catagory don't think weekly/monthly you have to think both and annual all at the same time.

One way to manage the weekly/monthly mismatch if that is what you want is to treat 4 weeks as a month worth and the extra 4 weeks in the year get set aside seperately(as you have more debt and are weekly then they become part of your debt payments).

You do have to have the mindset that this months/4 weeks are to cover next months outgoings.

Since you are pooling you could just forget whos money is coming in and just do a cashflow forcast based on all income.


Why split the debt money if you are pooling?
snowball as if they were one pot of debts.

With the current split of the £1720 70:30 £1204:£516

£4k takes 7.75months
£15k takes 12.46 months
what happens at month 8 to OH debt money once that debt is gone?

Why are you saving if you have debts?


I think this sums it up
If we both got paid monthly around the same time, then ideally I would just go through the list, tick off every payment that I'm stashing, putting in bills account or elsewhere... but sadly we can't do that. For example if I need to put £354 towards my train travel for the month but I only get paid £838 a week then that is a huge dent...

The only thing I can thing of is that I essentially make my boyfriend's life work "weekly" too in that he will get his fun-money delivered weekly. Thus splitting up his income into a weekly allowance too.

you have not realy pooled your resources in your head you need to forget who/where the money comes from, just when you need to get money out of the joint pot for a catagory it needs to be there so a cashflow forcast will do that. his and your 150 fun money does not have to come out of your own money, it does not even have to get taken out weekly/monthly just when you need it as long ast it does not go over £3000(£250*12) each a year, much easier to think annualy for this sort of spends so you can go over/under on the week/month.

getmore4less

greensalad wrote: »

This is exactly what we do now. The problems come into play when we have belt-tightening months (I'm a contractor so sometimes I have a few weeks with no income and also sometimes my partner has extra travel expenditure). I guess we were trying to combine our income into one pot to give us more flexibility when either one of us has a dip.

That just says your budget is wrong and is probably why you may have problems shifting the debt on tight months, your current planning is probably based on too much income over a year and not accounting for all spends.

You say £6k a month total is that best month, worst month a realistic average month.

As a contractor you need to set aside holiday/sick and between jobs weeks(£838*45/12) £3142 that would be the most I would have towards a month(and that is taking holidays on your between jobs weeks), that would suggest if there is £6k total you are in reality bringing in about the same, maybe you less if you treat the travel as a business expense(which you should as a contractor out of gross not net).

You would benifit from people having a look over a SOA to see where your £3780 is going.

getmore4less

remembered you did a SOA while back, will have another look...

If you are going joint then a new SOA is probably needed.

I looked at the diary, I think you need to think longer term, no point buying weekly tickets if the saving on monthly is more than the interest on any debt.

Also we were looking for a glass cabinet/sideboard for a 85cm space and thought of IKEA billy as an option found this in a charity shop, UK new over £2k they want £175 but it is a too big(95cm) for the space we planned trying to think of somewhere else to put it.
Skovby SM84+SM85.