Budgeting monthly but get paid weekly

Bookowl

I downloaded the budget planner but it's based on a monthly income. I get paid weekly and this can fluctuate on occasion. How do I budget monthly based on a fluctuating weekly wage and incorporate that into a yearly wage?

Willing2Learn

I get paid weekly too, and yet I budget monthly.

I just set my budget as if I was getting 4 weeks income every month. I calculate my expenses on a monthly basis.

Because there are more than 28 days each calendar month, it means every three months or so, I get a bonus weeks income, which goes straight into my savings pot as it is a budget surplus.

Hope that makes sense

Neil_Jones

Or just multiply your weekly incoming by 52 and divide by 12 to get a rough approximation. If it fluctuates that wildly work an average out and multiply that.

Terry_Towelling

Not so much connected with the technicalities of budgeting, but one tactic that might help is if you can defer a lot of your spending to a single point in the month. How do you do this? You use an 'empty' credit card for as much as you can (e.g. groceries, petrol, rail fares, household stuff) and arrange to have that paid in full by direct debit. That will certainly nail down a lot of the issues you are coming up against.

For all of the direct debit style expenses, it depends how much of a cash buffer you are carrying in your account but perhaps try to reschedule them towards the end of the month.

Bookowl

thanks I'll try that.
sometimes my weekly pay changes depending on hours worked.

Silverspeed

Or just multiply your weekly incoming by 52 and divide by 12 to get a rough approximation. If it fluctuates that wildly work an average out and multiply that.

I am doing similar like that just opposite way.
I mean I get paid monthly, but I calculate my budget weekly. Every week I move my weekly budget (mainly food costs) to an account with standing order.

Bookowl

By empty credit card- do you mean one that has been cleared or one that is interest free?
I have my phone as dd in the middle of the month. how do I get my phone provider to move this to end of month?

PRAISETHESUN

Bookowl wrote: »

By empty credit card- do you mean one that has been cleared or one that is interest free?
I have my phone as dd in the middle of the month. how do I get my phone provider to move this to end of month?

I don't think it matters in that the situation Terry has described whether the card is interest free or not - if you pay off the credit card balance in FULL every month then there is no interest to pay anyway so what matters is that you can afford to pay it off (ie. only carry a balance consisting of bills you'd normally have to pay anyway). This will consolidate your everyday spending into a single monthly repayment - although it still ends up being the same amount overall, it can help with budgeting

Takmon

Bookowl wrote: »

I downloaded the budget planner but it's based on a monthly income. I get paid weekly and this can fluctuate on occasion. How do I budget monthly based on a fluctuating weekly wage and incorporate that into a yearly wage?

Personally i would work out how much money you need to spend each month on essential excluding food (energy bills, mortgage/rent, council tax etc).

You then work out how much this is weekly (4.33 weeks in a month) and transfer this amount into a cashback account each time your paid to cover all your essential spends.

You then work out how each week you want to spend on food and other general spending and anything extra you have above the total of these two amount when your paid put into your savings.

That's the simplest way of doing it while still keeping on top of your finances.

You can then go further and look at longer term spending such as yearly car insurance, car maintenance budget, appliance replacement / house repair budgets and ensure you are saving enough to cover these.

snowite79

I am in a similar boat, husband just started a job which is weekly fluctuating pay. So I cant just times by 52 as there is no constant figure. I am paid monthly. Hes just completed his 1st full month and I'm finding it a full time job to keep on top of our finances and make sure we arent going to go overdrawn within any given week. I've taken my works cashflow spreadsheet, which is based weekly, and plugged in our figures. It's very manual and can only be accessed from my laptop. I've tried to convert it to a Google sheet so I have access remotely and on my phone, but I cant translate the formulas. I'd love a budgeting app that takes weekly income and expenditure into account - does such thing exist??

getmore4less

Budget is the plan for where you want your income to go.

This should be done over a minimum of a year.

What you really mean is you cashflow monthly on outgoings where your income cashflow is 4 weekly.

Reality is for most people most cashflows out are weekly/weekends, monthly, quarterly, annual, longer term.


Break the 4week/month link and budget for a full year then do a years cashflow to see when you can have the discretionary spends.

With variable income you need a buffer to get past the low pay periods if your spends will exceed the lowest income.


two simple ways to manage the cashflow if you want to do monthly

Stick all your income into one place and pay yourself monthly from that.
Make each 4weeks(13 in a year) last a month(12 in a year) and stick one pay cycle into a pot for longer term or to provide the buffer for the next year.