Budgets

[Lynne Holloman]

When making your budget do you divide by 4 if you get paid weekly or take the amount times 52 weeks divided by 12 months? 

I like the second option because it gives me more money every month but of course, it doesn't work every month since not every month do we get paid that extra week.

Any ideas...tips? 

[littleplum]

We budget each paycheck.  When I was working, and getting paid weekly, that meant that we were writing our budget (on an Excel spreadsheet) for every week of the month.  Now that I am at home full time, and DH is the only one working, we make the budget for every two weeks.  Sometimes we have three paychecks in a month, and pay the mortgage twice in that month.  So that means that on paper, we sometimes have no mortgage payment due that month.  That happened this month.  We paid the mortgage for June back in May, and we get paid July 1st, so there will be no mortgage payment coming out of our checking account in June.

[zebra15]

If you get paid weekly, times it by 52 and divide by 12.  Thats the whole point of a budget.  Your money is going to vary month to month based on the number of weeks- if you get paid weekly, bi-weekly, on the 1st and 15th, monthly etc.  You make a budget and go from there.  You need to tell your money what to do!

[sunflower.mama]

What works for me is to budget on a monthly basis, and include 2 paychecks in the budget.  DH gets paid biweekly, so that means that twice a year we get an "extra" paycheck.  The extra paychecks go to 1)  christmas expenses and 2) catching up on cc or clothing budget.  I like that I can calculate what our monthly expenses, including mortgage, are, and have that money sitting in the bank on the 1st of the month.  We budget "ahead" which means that the 2 paychecks we receive in May are for June 1st's expenses.  I am careful not to spend more in May than we need for our June 1 bills.