Budgeting help, I get paid monthly...

[loganjared]

I get paid monthly and my husband gets paid every other month.
What we have been doing is the two big things, house payment and car payment come out of his checks(house out of 1st check, car out of 2nd) and when I get paid we put half in savings and two weeks later, I pay myself the other half.
When we look at our budget and compare it to what we actually spend, we should have a lot left over but every week we barely make it to pay day.
I am wondering if it is a timing issue and if we should change how we do it. I am wondering if when I get paid on the 20th of every month if I should pay house and car that day.
Do any of you get paid monthly? What works for you? It gets even trickier in the summer when I get paid in June for 3 months and my next check is end of September.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[yesiamcrazy]

I am not sure exactly what you are asking, but here's how we do it. We get paid monthly. Both of us on the same day. I have a spiral notebook and every month I write down all of our expenses and the approximate cost of each. I also write down how much goes into our savings, and have recently added what I call the "when life goes crazy fund." I put a certain amount aside each month for those times when everything seems to need to be paid for at once. Then anytime I want to "check budget" I pay any bills I can pay, subtract out what I have spent from expenses such as grocery and gas, and subtract out all the bills and expenses I have yet to pay. Then I can see how much is left for entertainment, eating out, buying things, etc.

 

[ilovemk76]

I get paid monthly and my husband gets paid every other month.
What we have been doing is the two big things, house payment and car payment come out of his checks(house out of 1st check, car out of 2nd) and when I get paid we put half in savings and two weeks later, I pay myself the other half.
When we look at our budget and compare it to what we actually spend, we should have a lot left over but every week we barely make it to pay day.
I am wondering if it is a timing issue and if we should change how we do it. I am wondering if when I get paid on the 20th of every month if I should pay house and car that day.
Do any of you get paid monthly? What works for you? It gets even trickier in the summer when I get paid in June for 3 months and my next check is end of September.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

I am confused. How so you only pay your mortgage and car payments every other month. Do you mean bi-monthly?

It does not matter if you are paid weekly, bi-weekly, twice a month, monthly or every other month. You have to budget your money and move from using this months pay to pay the bills but using last months income to pay the bills.

 

[loganjared]

Sorry, yes I meant my husband gets paid every other week.
I'm just wondering if it would work better to pay everything that I can with my check
& use my husbands for all of the variable things like groceries, utilities, etc

 

[disney1990]

For years, I was paid monthly. I never had a problem budgeting my money. I simply added 1/2 of the amount to my check book twice a month and ignored the fact that all the money went into the account at the beginning of the month.

 

[DawnM]

For 16 years I was paid monthly. I just budgeted accordingly.

Now I am staying at home and DH gets paid the 1st and 15th. We use the first check for mortgage and groceries and then the 15th for all the other bills and savings, etc....

We use YNAB for our budgeting (which I learned about here on this very board!) We LOVE it!

Dawn

 

[Tink-aholic]

As a teacher, I get paid in June for the whole summer. I paid my July, August, and September mortgage payments right away, even though I budget very carefully. I also have a spreadsheet with my budget and bills that I update weekly. Finally, most of my bills are on auto-pay, so it just comes out of my account when they are due.