Xjyuk

I get paid on the 15th and the last of the month and my husband will be getting paid weekly when he starts a new job after the one he has been working at for 25 years will be closing soon. How does one work the bills when one person gets paid twice a month and the other will be weekly. I usually make more money then he does currently and so we pay the bigger of the bills when I get paid and the other bills which are usually smaller on his, but when he goes weekly; how does that work? I would like some advice on who are in a similar situation or who can give some advice on how to how to this. Thank you.

It sounds like the problem is that when your husband got paid twice a month, his paycheck was large enough to cover the bills in full so you were able to pay them right away, then you could use the rest of the money for optional expenses like entertainment, or you could cut back on variable expenses like groceries. Now that he's being paid weekly, a single paycheck is no longer large enough to cover all the bills, even though he's being paid the same amount (I assume your question would be different if he'd taken a significant paycut). So you're worried that you may spend too much on groceries/entertainment/etc then not have enough left to pay the bill when he receives his next paycheck.

If that's your concern, then when your husband gets paid you need to set aside money specifically for the bills that are coming due later. If you have a $400 bill due at the end of the month, set aside $100 from each of his paychecks to pay the bill. You might want physically separate the money, for example by transferring it to another account until you're ready to pay the bill. When your husband gets his final paycheck for the month, transfer the $300 you saved earlier in the month back to your primary account and pay the bill.

As others have noted, tracking your spending and using a budget will be important tools for making this approach work. Make a list of all the bills you paid last month and when they were due. Also list out your paychecks and their dates. You'll be able to see which bills can be paid with a single paycheck, and which ones will need to be split across multiple paychecks. Don't forget about bills that come less frequently (like every three months), and plan for those in the same way.

The ideal state is one in which it doesn't matter when either of you get paid. Where you use last month's income to pay this month's expenses. The starting place is a simple budget. You know when money is coming in, and you know when your fixed expenses are due, so just map it out on paper/spreadsheet to know how much of each paycheck needs to go to which expenses. Once you are a month ahead, you just have to worry about the total expense pile rather than the timing of the paychecks and payment due dates.

It's probably also a good time to review spending, if things are tight, figure out where the money has gone and where you can cut spending, with the goal being to get a month ahead first, then to have a healthy emergency fund, retirement saving, etc.

I suggest researching zero-based budgets, these are characterized by deciding ahead of time where every dollar will go, that means you budget for vacations, car maintenance, going out to eat, etc. It may sound rigid, but it's a tool that will greatly help. There are plenty of budgeting applications and spreadsheet templates you can use as a starting point.

We are in a similar situation, but one of us is paid monthly and the other is paid semi-monthly. Here's some things we do that might help you as well:

• As much as possible, stagger large bills so they don't all hit at once. Our mortgage hits on the first, so we try to schedule as many other payments as we can on the 16th so the first paycheck is not overloaded.


• See if your bank/landlord will allow you to pay the mortgage/rent in half-payments bi-weekly. This will smooth out the payments and as a bonus you pay one extra monthly payment per year, since there are roughly 26 bi-weekly periods in a year. But don't pay extra for this - at worst you can just send two payments manually.


• Plan a month out. Save enough from the first paycheck(s) to cover any bills that come out in the second half of the month.



• Use separate bank accounts for "regular" monthly bills and for discretionary/ periodic spending. We deposit our paychecks into one account and transfer all but what is needed for that period into a second account. That way we always know how much money we have for groceries/dining out/etc., and when it's gone, it's gone. IT may take a few months to get used to this, but once you learn to stay within that budget it helps control "impulse" spending.




• Make sure you have enough "cushion" in your cash to handle any bumps. For us that's $500 per month (meaning we try to keep the "discretionary" account above that at a minimum). You didn't mention debt but the last thing you want to do is use credit cards to cover these bumps since it can become a habit that leads to a snowball of credit card debt.

Above all of this is to make sure you have a decent "emergency fund" to cover any large unexpected expenses, and to plan for other irregular expenses like car and home repairs, etc. We use a separate savings account as an "escrow" account to save up for these bills as well as holidays, property taxes and insurance that don't occur monthly.

Good luck!