Piggybanking budgeting with 4 weekly payments

supanova123

Hi, 

I am a newbie and looking for help, I am looking to either set up accounts attached to my Halifax Ultimate Reward account that splits my income up into 'pots'  to follow the piggybank way of budgeting or open one of the accounts the site recommends. However what I am struggling with to wrap my head around is the fact that my main salary gets paid in the last working day of the month, but other income, small pension and things like child benefit are all paid 4 weekly, which although over the month my income is the same, its difficult to split my income into the pots as they move each month, but my direct debits do not.

Does anyone have any experience of getting this organised in such a way to benefit from budgeting with piggybanking and moving pay dates? Any suggestions? Also if anyone has any experience of using Monzo or Chase?
Thank you
  

Rob5342

It's very annoying how they pay child benefit etc four weekly when bills and salaries are always monthly. It makes it difficult for people to budget.

What we do is save the child benefit as soon as we get it, and reduce our savings standing order by the same amount. Thst way we know there is money for the bills and the savings just get topped up at different times. 

Another approach eould be to have the pension and child benefit paid into a separate account, and transfer a fixed amount into your main account each time you get paid. That would mean you hsve a fixed monthly income into you main account eaxh month, and once a year for each benefit you would hsve an extra months worth of money. 

One other way would be to save the benefits and use them to pay for insurance etc when it was due each year intead if having a monthly direct debit. 

surreysaver

Four weekly, surely, is best, as its spread evenly. Its organisation which do things monthly which are awkward. 
With four-weekly payments, you simply get paid thirteen times a year, so there is one 'free' payment per year. But just manually make any payments instead of automating things 

Rob5342

surreysaver said:

Four weekly, surely, is best, as its spread evenly. Its organisation which do things monthly which are awkward. 
With four-weekly payments, you simply get paid thirteen times a year, so there is one 'free' payment per year. But just manually make any payments instead of automating things 

Either is ok on it's own, the problem is when there is a difference. Salaries, mortgages, biils etc are overwhelmingly monthly, so when benefits are paid four weekly it puts a spanner in the works. 

blue.peter

Do you have a money management program or app? I'm thinking of something like AceMoney or MoneyManager EX.

I have long found AceMoney useful in planning ahead. With this, I can plan ahead and see how much money I'll have in my accounts. All it takes is setting up the necessary regular income (salary/pension/benefits etc) and outgoings (rent/mortgage/water/council tax/energy/broadband etc.) on the schedule page. Ace Money can easily cope with payments at different frequencies. The accounts pages will let you look ahead and make decisions about moving money into or out of savings or budget pots, and the timing of such movements. I'll soon be having to cope with a similar situation to you: four-weekly state pension + two monthly-paid private pensions arriving on different days, and monthly bills. I'm confident that I can adapt to it with the help of my money management program.

supanova123

blue.peter said:

Do you have a money management program or app? I'm thinking of something like AceMoney or MoneyManager EX.

I have long found AceMoney useful in planning ahead. With this, I can plan ahead and see how much money I'll have in my accounts. All it takes is setting up the necessary regular income (salary/pension/benefits etc) and outgoings (rent/mortgage/water/council tax/energy/broadband etc.) on the schedule page. Ace Money can easily cope with payments at different frequencies. The accounts pages will let you look ahead and make decisions about moving money into or out of savings or budget pots, and the timing of such movements. I'll soon be having to cope with a similar situation to you: four-weekly state pension + two monthly-paid private pensions arriving on different days, and monthly bills. I'm confident that I can adapt to it with the help of my money management program.

Thank you, this is helpful!

I have sighed up to chase so that I can do the piggybanking, but being able to use something that will help with further in the month will be great, I have 4 payments in that are 4 weekly and it just doesn't help with the budgeting!

I'll give this a go...got to be better than spreadsheet and calculator!

supanova123

Rob5342 said:

surreysaver said:

Four weekly, surely, is best, as its spread evenly. Its organisation which do things monthly which are awkward. 
With four-weekly payments, you simply get paid thirteen times a year, so there is one 'free' payment per year. But just manually make any payments instead of automating things 

Either is ok on it's own, the problem is when there is a difference. Salaries, mortgages, biils etc are overwhelming monthly, so when benefits are paid monthly it puts a spanner in the works. 

Definitely, I have been trying to make this work for years and failed!

ThePirates

I get paid 4 weekly but all my bills go out monthly, basically I have a spare 13th salary payment. 
I use a spreadsheet with a 12 month look ahead, all of my income and outgoings listed so I know what my balance will be on any day 12 months ahead as long as I stick to my budget.

blue.peter

supanova123 said:

I have sighed up to chase so that I can do the piggybanking, but being able to use something that will help with further in the month will be great, I have 4 payments in that are 4 weekly and it just doesn't help with the budgeting!

In case it helps further with your budgeting and money management, I suggest looking at a few other threads on the subject:

1. How to get back on my feet with my finances
2. Advice (bill paying)
3. Shocked at my spending
4. How do you stay motivated with budgeting?
   

Don't be put off by the headings: these discussions contain some good general advice that you might find relevant to your situation.

supanova123 said:

I'll give this a go...got to be better than spreadsheet and calculator!

At the risk of sounding like one of the four Yorkshiremen , you're lucky. When I started doing this stuff, we didn't have PCs, smartphones or spreadsheets. I had to use pen and paper.

Eco_Miser

"pen and paper", Tha'  were lucky, I had to use a pencil and the back of a fag packet.

But seriously, @supanova123,  the bigger the 'float' you can save up, the easier it is to smooth out the imbalance between incomings and outgoings, to the point when you've got a whole month's outgoings saved, the problem goes away. Try to use your 13th payments (the second in the same month) to just boost your savings.

Incidentally, I use a complicated spreadsheet to forecast and plan in detail all ins and outs, to, from and between bank accounts each month, several months ahead.