State Pension Paid Four Weekly

freccles

Is there no provision for having State Pension paid calendar monthly rather than 4 weekly? When it is your only income, it is very hard to budget Direct Debits etc.  Or can Direct Debits be paid 4 weekly?

Dazed_and_C0nfused

freccles said:

Is there no provision for having State Pension paid calendar monthly rather than 4 weekly? When it is your only income, it is very hard to budget Direct Debits etc.  Or can Direct Debits be paid 4 weekly?

No.  Weekly is possible but not monthly.

You'd have to ask each company about direct debits but I suspect most would say no.

One option is to treat each four weekly payment as a monthly one and then once a year you get a nice bonus!

arnoldy

Surely to keep the costs down there should be one frequency? I can't ask my employer to pay be weekly/4 weekly/monthly at my convenience because that comes with a cost burden and admin. Any money saved to the public purse could increase pension or be spent on something useful.

p00hsticks

arnoldy said:

Surely to keep the costs down there should be one frequency? I can't ask my employer to pay be weekly/4 weekly/monthly at my convenience because that comes with a cost burden and admin. Any money saved to the public purse could increase pension or be spent on something useful.

I doubt if there is much savings to be made by removing functionality that is already built into the current system. After all the original frequency was weekly, even though four-weekly is now encouraged to reduce the number of payments going through the system.

 While you can't choose your payment frequency with a single employer, there will still be people out there who are paid (or receive benefits) weekly and for budgeting purposes find it easier to also claim their state pension weekly. There are also those who simply can't get afford to wait four weeks before receiving their first installment.

 What we won't see is them spending a lot of money to introduce a calendar month frequency, as that would represent a big investment.

baser999

Surely monthly or four-weekly shouldn’t make that much difference as far as outgoings are concerned? You know you’re getting £x coming in and £y to pay out, the difference is spare

geordiejon

Is there no provision for having State Pension paid calendar monthly rather than 4 weekly? When it is your only income, it is very hard to budget Direct Debits etc.  Or can Direct Debits be paid 4 weekly?

i can see your problem, i was in a company which paid my wages 4 weekly so have learned to adapt over the years,it becomes a problem when the 13th month hits and there is a change of weeks you are paid.
if you work with a spredsheet instead of doing the budget month by month try to do it pay day to pay day, so some months you will go into the following month.
hope i have made myself clear.

p00hsticks

geordiejon said:

Is there no provision for having State Pension paid calendar monthly rather than 4 weekly? When it is your only income, it is very hard to budget Direct Debits etc.  Or can Direct Debits be paid 4 weekly?

i can see your problem, i was in a company which paid my wages 4 weekly so have learned to adapt over the years,it becomes a problem when the 13th month hits and there is a change of weeks you are paid.
if you work with a spredsheet instead of doing the budget month by month try to do it pay day to pay day, so some months you will go into the following month.
hope i have made myself clear.

Another option if it is really causing a budgeting  problem is to set up a bank account purely to get your pension paid into, and then set up a monthly standing order to move the pension payment over to your usual account. 

Murphybear

I get my state pension paid every 2 weeks.  This may be unusual but I was getting ESA just before I retired, this was paid every 2 weeks and they just swapped ESA for the pension.  I have a works pension which is paid monthly and a very small pension of £800 which is paid yearly. 

I’ve never had a problem budgeting.  I find having internet banking very useful as I can check my balance any time.  The £800 pays the tax, insurance and MOT/service on my little car.  

Descrabled

Government seems to be wedded to 4 weekly systems. All benefits are paid every 4 weeks. State pension paid 4 weekly unless you specifically ask for it to be paid weekly. The NHS repeat prescriptions are every 4 weeks.

poppy12345

Descrabled said:

. All benefits are paid every 4 weeks.

No, they are not. Universal Credit is monthly, unless requested to be paid every 2 weeks. ESA/JSA and Income Support is every 2 weeks. Carers allowance can be weekly. Tax credits weekly or 4 weekly.

calcotti

poppy12345 said:

Universal Credit is monthly, unless requested to be paid every 2 weeks. 

UC would not be actually every two weeks. When split it would be twice within each month so the first payment is at two weeks and the second payment on two weeks in Feb and further 16th or 17th days on other months.