Tips to checks

I’m going from always having a job that gathers tips, and saving/budgeting, to having a check every two weeks?? Any suggestions? Any tips to save and budget?

Congrats on your new job!

Regarding your budget there are several options such as a monthly budget, paycheck budget, percent category budget, or a zero based budget. Your budget should include your fixed expenses, variable expenses, spending/debt (if applicable), and savings. If you are currently budgeting you may need to make minor changes due to your pay frequency changing.

As for savings, if you do not have an emergency fund you may want to start there. The general rule is three to six months of expenses. Once you have an emergency fund then you would want to start retirement saving. Check into any plans offered by your employer if they offer a match. Otherwise you can look into an IRA either Traditional or Roth. Next you could move into more specific savings for goals like purchasing a new car, house, other big ticket items, vacations, rainy day funds and the like.

We are visual people so we bought a calendar and wrote all our bill dates and pay dates on it. That way we can tell at a glance which bills have to be paid with which check. A few years of doing that and we kind of know why goes where (and when) without looking but it’s still helpful when something new gets added to the mix.

In between paychecks, once a week or so I'll update a list of what bills and transfers I have coming up that need to come out of the next paycheck. I check that against the amount I'm expecting in the check. I also have an every dollar budget and use an app with a digital envelope system to monitor our spending.

Congratulations on the job! When I started the job I am in 10 plus years ago, we were paid twice a month. It made scheduling bills easy. Now we get paid every 2 weeks which took some adjustment, I have a spreadsheet to track monthly bills and income. I also use a notebook to track bills, upcoming expenses and due dates for bills. I am fortunate that I was able to move some due dates on bills to accommodate the change in how I was paid, for example power and gas bills were out of sync with water and phone so I called and asked if we could change billing dates… water and phone adjusted due dates to match up with power and gas.

Congrats on your new job!

Regarding your budget there are several options such as a monthly budget, paycheck budget, percent category budget, or a zero based budget. Your budget should include your fixed expenses, variable expenses, spending/debt (if applicable), and savings. If you are currently budgeting you may need to make minor changes due to your pay frequency changing.

As for savings, if you do not have an emergency fund you may want to start there. The general rule is three to six months of expenses. Once you have an emergency fund then you would want to start retirement saving. Check into any plans offered by your employer if they offer a match. Otherwise you can look into an IRA either Traditional or Roth. Next you could move into more specific savings for goals like purchasing a new car, house, other big ticket items, vacations, rainy day funds and the like.

Thank you!!! And that leads to my next post, about back pay… I had about 3,000 emergency fund saved but when it rains it pours and unemployment hasn’t given me my back pay for Covid at all, I didn’t start getting money until June, last time I worked before this week was March. My car Broke and rent and phone there went my emergency fund. So how do I go about getting my back pay?