payday — The Abbett Road Blog

I've seen a few blog posts about this and surprisingly they have been from people who don't even get paid bi-weekly! I don't understand that at all! Nothing knocking them, but unless you're in the situation, it's a bit harder to see how you have to manage your money properly!

This is how I have managed my money for over a year now being on a bi-weekly pay system and this is how we do it now that we are married. They key is to get on a schedule where the last check of the current month is actually used as your first check for the next month. That way you can start paying all the bills you have in the first half of the month with money you have in your checking account when the month starts and then when you get your first check in the month, pay the remaining amount with that money. Confusing? I'll explain.

Say your pay schedule looks like this...

February 5
February 19
March 4
March 18
April 1
April 15
April 29
May 27

We have 7 bills due between March 1-15th (and every month) including things like our mortgage, cell phone bill, gym membership, two credit cards, etc. And the rest are due between the 15th and the 30/31st.

This is where it "sounds" tricky. We use the last check from the previous month, in this case February 19th, as our first check for the current month, in this case March. So the "two" checks we use for the month of March will be February 19th and March 4th. This allows us to pay ALL of our bills for the month on time with no issue. Make sense so far?

What happens to the extra check in April you ask, how do you handle that?

I'm glad you asked! If you get paid bi-weekly and are used to living off of 2 paychecks per month, that third paycheck twice a year can be a huge blessing! Now we are on the Dave Ramsey Plan and for those of you who know what that means, we are on Baby Step 2.

For those of you haven't heard of Dave Ramsey, that just means we are in the phase where we are "Getting Rid of Debt!" So depending where you are at in your Personal Finance Journey would depend on what you did with those "extra checks." -- Because we are in debt, we put the entirety of the check towards our debt snowball (after tithing on it), which is a huge victory! It's awesome to see a huge chunk of money chipped away at our massive debt!! For those of you who have NO debts, you can save it if you are working on your Emergency Fund (3-6 mos of Expenses) OR you can spend a little and give a little OR if you have children, you can a put some away for their college funds. It really just depends where you are in your journey! For us, we will be putting those checks towards debt for the foreseeable future and imagine a lot of you will be doing the same thing!! DOWN WITH DEBT!! :)

So in the case of a 3-check month, the middle check (of the month) would be your "extra check" and then you go back to business as usual. The check at the end of the month goes towards the following month, in this case, the April 29th check is earmarked for May as well as the May 13th check.

*Note: If you can, work with your bill companies and spread out your payments so that some of them are later than the latest date your second check will ever be (for us that is the 13th of Month). I have our bills set up so that half are due around the 15th. -- You can usually get a yearly pay schedule from your company, but if not, you can use a yearly calendar and circle out all your pay dates for the year!

I hope that this helps some of you who might be struggling or who might just be starting out trying to budget on a bi-weekly basis. I know when I moved from getting paid once a month to getting paid every other week, I about had a panic attack, but once I took a breath and realized that if I got just a little ahead, I would be ok. This method may not be for everyone, some might need to get an entire month ahead, and that's ok too! The goal is to make sure that you are able to pay each of your bills on time every month, regardless of the fact that your paydays fluctuate!

Happy Budgeting!!

<3 C&A