I've started following a version of the "Stackbacks" budget, where my direct deposit is split between two accounts. One account for bills, periodic "required" expenses, and savings. Another account gets just enough for two-weeks worth of spending on everyday living expenses and incidentals.

stevelong

Maybe it's the nerdy accountant in me, but I set up all my accounts that need paying (credit cards, dish network, student loans, etc.) at [yodlee.com] . I have it set to send me reminders when new bills pop up. Then I go online and pay them (or schedule to pay them), and move the email into my "Bills" folder in gmail. There are two payments a month that Yodlee doesn't fetch. Those are my electric company (but they'll send me an email themselves) and my apartment for rent...but it's not hard to remember to pay them on the 1st of the month.

The scheduling of the payments coming out of my checking account works well with Quicken, where I have my paycheck set up, so I know how much I should have in there at any time.

MayorBee is getting what plants crave

I get paid monthly on the last business day of the month, so I guess I'm not part of the target audience. However, my wife is paid twice a month (on the 15th and on the last business day). Since we both get a check on the last day of the month, I pay the majority of the bills all at once on the first day of the following month (most of my bills are due between the 5th and the 15th). I just pay them all in bulk and then I know how much money we have the for the remainder of the month. There's one bill (either gas or electric, same company, 2 bills don't remember which) that comes out halfway through the month. I just pay that when it arrives. It works out great.

There was a time after the overtime bill was passed that I was switched from monthly to bi-weekly. That just sucked having to re-adjust my finances and my budgeting. When I got my promotion, I went back to monthly and all was right with the world. Many people think I'm nuts for enjoying my monthly check, but it really helps with budgeting out the month because I can pay everything all at once a the beginning of the month.

RunawayJim

I was able to call my CC company, my car loan, and my insurance and switched the date of my bill to a more convenient time. I get paid on the 15th and last day of the month. My rent payment is the only bill i have in the beginning of the month and the rest of the bills fall on the second paycheck. This makes me FEEL like I'm paying less because it's never more than x% of my paycheck. It also lets me budget better for "fun" things because I have a better grasp on what's coming in and out. I found that most bills will allow you to change the payment date.

georgegsmithjr

Right now I'm paying as soon as I get the paycheck...but after this month I'll be back to my paying that two weeks bills with the previous paycheck again.....and slowly store up to survive the 2 week downtime in the winter and the 2 months in the summer..yay seasonal work.

Ajh

I'm using RTM extension in gmail to set-up a reoccurring alert for my monthly bills and it's working tremendously. I kinda wish that they would create a free-form field that would allow me to enter in the bill amount. Right now I am forced to use the "estimate" field.

neilw21

I get paid monthly and I have due dates all over the place with my bill. I think I'm going to try and get my due dates adjusted as well.

TomeOne

Forgot to say- The above strategy (putting everything on the card) has one drawback- it's easy to not pay attention to your spending. For this, I use Mint.com, which makes it pretty easy to see all the money that went in/out of your accounts every month, and what everything was spent on.

callingshotgun

Using the ability to pay a majority of my bills online, when I receive a statement, I go to the web site, and create a payment event on the day it's due. In a similar fashion, CC's are due at the same time of the month, I just set up a reminder and again, date it for when it's due.

purduepete

I actually set up all my bills (cable, internet, cellphone, etc) to auto-pay on my credit card, so instead of keeping track of a bunch of seperate payments, the only thing I have to keep track of is that I make a payment on my credit card by the 15th of every month. Even that is handled electronically- I just log on to online banking and transfer money from my checking account (gets funded automatically via direct deposit) to my visa account. I've managed to duck the whole "paper" thing entirely, with the exception of manually writing a check every month for rent.

callingshotgun

I've always been on a every other week schedule, and what I finally found that works is that I 'pay' half of my major bills with every pay period. For instance, I pay $280 dollars every two weeks for my car. I know I'll cover the $560 a month minimum and I'm reducing the amount of interest over time. For rent, I take the amount out of the ledger so it I account for it in the discretionary fund. This plan is easiest to start in a month with an extra pay check.

SudiptiCestrinus

@RunawayJim: I just started a new job which pays monthly, and I am still trying to adjust after a couple years of weekly/bi-weekly payment. It requires a lot more advance planning.

The past few months I have cut things a little close just by eating out and shopping too much. This month, I set allowances for myself and put them into my cell phone, so I can keep a running tab of how much I am spending. Hopefully that will keep me on track a little better.

I think the monthly checks will be fine once I get the hang of it.

Rhayader

@RunawayJim: I'm monthly too and it seems to help get everything over with and not have to think about the bills all the time.

baest

I go about it roughly the same way as "georgegsmithjr"... I changed all of my due dates for various bills, credit cards, etc., to be spread out over the middle two weeks of the month. I then have most of them automated and/or online. This way the payments slowly go out (so I have extra cash around if need be) and my last paycheck of the month is available for my mortgage payment.

longxiongdi

Works for weekly pay too... many months will have a fifth check. If you can budget for four checks, that's an even better bonus.

But the other thing I'd encourage, for those who can be a little disciplined, is to go ahead and write the checks (or set up the online bill payment) and subtract it from your register, but mail or transfer funds closer to the due date. Particularly with larger bills (and assuming an interest-bearing checking account), you'll keep a larger average balance and in the long run will earn a non-trivial amount of additional interest. Also makes for a nice buffer while keeping the perception (via your register) that your balance is low, reducing those "money burning a hole in your pocket" temptations.

Logical Extremes

For me, the answer was simple: Adjust your budget cycle. When I get paid every two weeks, I have a four week budget cycle (thirteen per year). When I get paid once or twice per month, I use a monthly cycle (12 per year). It works wonders and is a no-brainer.

Since I still receive 12 bills per utility per year but have 13 budget cycles in which I plan to recieve a bill, I actually get one "bill vacation" per year per utility!

I hope this makes sense- if not, reply and I'll expound.

engstewart

@stevelong: I do the same thing. One "expense" checking account, one "spending" checking account, and then my savings account with ING. I just have work deposit the correct amount in each account every paycheck. Seems to be working OK...

KStrike155

I have a "Money" calendar in Google Calendar, with all the bills that I'm responsible for paying each month as recurring appointments. I also include the amount for each bill.

So when I get paid, go to GCal, and subtract all my upcoming expenses from whatever I have in my account, and the result is whatever money I can spend until the next paycheque.

I'm also starting to plan larger purchases this way. If I want to buy something that costs more than $100, I try to slot it into the calendar so I can plan for the expense like any other bill.

tommertron

I'm terrible at saving and at paying bills. In an effort to survive (read: keep bill collectors from breaking my thumbs and taking all my stuff away) I started auto paying EVERYTHING. I started with some extra cash (tax return) and then set down with the bills and scheduled my bank to make 50%-51% payments every two weeks. I do this with everything including paying small loans back to my mother. The bank mails a check to places it cannot electronically transfer and NOTHING is debited from my account. This protects me from a service provider screwing up and pulling $$$money$$$ from my account when they are not supposed to.
This works so well that one time I noticed I had overpayed my car insurance so far I didn't have to pay the bill for 3 months!
I never have to think about it, the bills are always payed and I get to keep my thumbs intact. Everyone is happy. If I would spend a little more time with my budget I could start shelling something back for savings as well (I really need to do that).

justsomereportingguy

@anniekate76: I can't stand bills that vary. My gas bill is like this, too. Sometimes its on the 27th, other times the 31st or the 1st. What the hell?

KStrike155

I get paid weekly by direct deposit, and with my online bill pay, I always schedule bills as they come in for the Friday closest to their due date without going past it.

This way I can see how much is required out of the next several paychecks for bills. The only downside are the two companies (my student loan and my cell phone) that require automatic deduction from their end for a decent rate. Curse them and their off-my-radar ways. I know the loans always go on the 14th of the month, but the cell phone can vary.

anniekate76

@georgegsmithjr: This is the same payday schedule that I am on. I pay my bills on payday, dating the cheques for the next day (i.e. the 1st and 16th). I have a spreadsheet in which I keep a schedule of which bills get paid on which payday (I pay some of them one pay period ahead) along with a history of what I've paid each in previous months and what I anticipate it will be in future months.

I call this spreadsheet "budget" though technically it really isn't. It is missing some info that a true budget would have, and has some that a true budget wouldn't.

Back when I was on a 2-week pay schedule, I had a small Perl application I had written that would let me key in new bills with their due dates, and it would, based on when the next payday was, spit out a list of what cheques to write. This could be done by hand, too, but I'm a geek :)

kc2idf

I pay all my bills on the 10th of the month, unless my paychecks come at a weird time (like if I get paid on the 11th), then I'll shift my bills around so I pay them as soon as I get the paycheck >1 week before they're due. The only bills I pay differently are my condo assessments, which are due on the first of the month, and my credit card bill, which I pay on the 25th. To help make sure I don't overspend on one paycheck I subtract the bill money first on my checkbook register. So, for the first paycheck of the month I subtract half of my credit card bill and utilities to be paid on the 10th. For the second paycheck I subtract the assessments and the other half of my credit card bill. Everything left over is for day-to-day expenses.

kerry

I used to use quicken billminder, but it was more of a task (i.e. annoyance) to use it, now I schedule the bills in GCal, then have it send me an SMS to remind me that it is due. It works for me.

shamalama

Some advise treating a third or fifth paycheck as extra by banking it--putting it entirely into savings.

That has never worked for me. I used to be on a two-week pay schedule, and for some reason, weekly expenses like groceries and gas still demanded part of my pay during the period covered by that third pay check. It was great for monthly expenses, though, which were easily handled by the first two checks.

What I found to work best was to base an entire year's budget on the same two-week periods my pay was on. I was able to anticipate the three-pay-check-months ahead of time and schedule bill payments just in time. It also made it easy to accommodate annual and semi-annual expenses.

A nasty divorce left me with $20,000 in credit card and IRS debt as well. I went on a campaign to pay it off by paying the credit card companies every two weeks. Most of them were on 28-day billing cycles, which is a scam to trip up their customers into paying late, so they can charge exorbitant fees. Not only was I never late, I paid much less interest, because the average daily balance that the interest charge is based upon was lower as a result of paying more often than once per month. They tried to stop me from paying the bill by sending statements saying the payment owed was $0.00. Some of them even stopped sending statements.

I just kept a list of account numbers and mailing addresses on hand and used my own envelopes to keep sending them the money. They love interest... but hate principle.

I was the ultimate deadbeat in their eyes.

penguiniator

@georgegsmithjr: your first statement is a pretty good tip, I bet a lot of people don't know that they can negotiate their due dates.

shamalama

I setup all my bills up for online banking, then every payday, I pay half. For bills that are variable, i.e. electricity, I estimate, and if need to, I make minor adjustments. I no longer need to pay attention to the due date on anything. I feel like I am more in control by doing this. If times are difficult, I can usually afford to skip half of a payment.

nekroscope

1. Direct deposit of paycheck.
2. All recurring payments are on a Google Calendar.
3. Savings and checking accounts linked online for the purpose of transfers.
4. Put as much as possible on a credit card, which is paid in full every month.
5. Schedule payments online, or write checks, as soon as a bill comes in.
6. Use GnuCash or some other double-entry package.

mdebusk

i take what's due for the month, cut it in half, and then put the money aside, in my account until it's due, then pay it

drsphincter

I don't touch it. Plain and simple. I put both bi-monthly checks in the bank, and pay my bills (and deposit into savings) with last month's checks. I have a budget which to spend in for the current month, and ensure that I always have at least x in the bank.

Cpryd001

I make as many payments as possible from my credit cards. Sounds like a horrible idea, till you know the details :P

1. I NEVER spend more money than I have in my checking account. [I use buxfer to keep track of my "actual" balance: Checking - (CC1 + CC2 + 1000) = Spendable].

2. Using Credit Cards fetches me rewards points.

3. I completely pay off my credit cards every payday. [This way, atleast one of those payments falls right after I get my statement for that month.]

4. On every 15th and the 30th, 10% of my paycheck is transferred into a savings account automatically.

5. The occasional third paycheck invariably goes into making rent and car payments, so by the time those are done, the impulse to blow the paycheck is gone.

Also, it helps that I see the economy imploding every time I look, so I lean more towards saving it rather than blowing it.

Lucifer_Cat

automatic payments via BofA, which all was set up online. I also have automatic deposits going into an emergency fund

coonj

I get paid every other week but I don't feel that when I get paid has anything to do with when I pay my bills.

I put EVERYTHING I can on automatic payment to be paid as close as I can get (within reason) to the bill's due date.

I think if a person is cutting their spending so close to their earning that it becomes timing critical when they get paid, then that's cutting it too close. If this is out of necessity then so be it, but otherwise the person should reign in the spending a bit.

Maybe I'm just lucky enough to not worry about it that much, or maybe my budgeting techniques work THAT well :)

Navin R Johnson

Eh, I get paid monthly. Which sounds like it sucks, but I've gotten pretty used to it... I'm billed monthly for almost all of my bills too, so it's not so bad. I think it almost makes it easier to budget.

MichaelBrazell

I'm definitely one of the ones that this article is pointing to, but I've managed to get my bills split during the month. I have my biggest bills at the beginning of the month (car loan), and the smallest bills at the end of the month (cell phone, credit card, student loans). It does definitely allow me to feel like I have more to spend, since I don't have it all going out at once. This also allows me to carry a more balanced balance (smaller spikes of outflow cash vs one large spike), leading to better interest as well.

harrellj

*Everything that is due at each of those two points.

XianZhuXuande

Well... I'm not living paycheck to paycheck, but I do have a lot of bills. Rather than sort them out in some painful annoying way I realized that they all have more than a 20 day grace period from the time the statement is available.

So I go on a bill-paying rampage right at the start of the month, and then right around the 15th. I pay everything that is due on one of those two points. Nothing is ever late, I don't have anything annoying to remember (I track credit cards in a spreadsheet), and I can spend the rest of my time thinking about stuff that's a little more enjoyable.

XianZhuXuande

I've been on the 26 checks/year thing for almost two years and still haven't gotten quite used to it. We live off about 1.25-1.5 of my checks per month so we end up saving the rest. In a 3 check month, we end up just saving the "extra" check.

In the end, I liked it when I had 24 checks per year better...much easier to do bill planning and automated savings. Now, I have to do quite a bit of spreadsheeting to figure out my savings/bills and timings and yada yada.

titaniumtommy

I'm in the "pay half with each check, automatically" camp. For years I found I couldn't reliably pay bills because money burns holes in my pockets. Heavily using my credit union's online bill-pay service has turned that around.

My pay is direct-deposited every other Friday. Most of my bills (debt, phone, ISP, insurance, etc) are fixed amounts each month, and I've scheduled a semi-monthly payment for each payday. My gas&electric bill isn't fixed, but when I get the bill I immediately schedule a half-payment for the next two paychecks. I'm planning on getting budget billing so it, too, is a fixed monthly amount.

The only glitch is property taxes, which must be payed in large lumps greater than I can afford on one paycheck. My current plan is to pay my spousal-equivalent "rent", which she can save for paying the taxes.

Since I'm paying half (or more) of my monthly bills biweekly, I'm working on building up a slight credit in the accounts, which would allow me to have some leeway for missing one or two payments a year for other things. I'm also paying down much more than the minimum on my (defunct) credit card, intending to have it payed off and closed around years-end. When one debt is payed off, I switch those funds to other debts to get them payed off.

blaisepascal

I get paid every other week as well, and this month is my 3 paycheck month. (Got paid today)

1) All my bills are setup in my online-banking.
2) I setup my pay schedule based on what's coming due before the next paycheck
3) payday comes, I login in the morning to my account, check what i paid approx 4 weeks ago, pay those again.

4) TAKE the extra paycheck from the month.. PAY MORE BILLS and keep ahead of the game! This gaurantees that i'll never be behind, plus on my mortgage and my car, this will add up to two more payments per year.

5) Pay my mortgage on a biweekly basis anyways, by doing half the payment PLUS $50

jchabotte

First of all, I have all my bills automagically payed for me. Every one of them is automatic withdrawal. So I never miss one. (And I've never had a miss-charge, that I know of)

But to make sure I always have enough in there for the bills, I have a little spreadsheet that I have split my budget into categories. I have a category for Mortage, one for TV/Cell/Internet, and one for all other utility bills. Then a category for everything else. Every time I get a paycheck, I make sure to divy it all out and put enough in those categories to pay the bills. Then when I'm spending money throughout the month, I don't look at my whole account balance, I just look at what I've got in my main spending category. Then I don't end up spending my bill money.

paqman

Apparently I am the only person that doesn't have to keep track of anything and still comes out fine with income/spending. It isn't as if I earn a lot either (~$2k/month).

czarandy

I just pay bills the day they arrive. No worrying about due dates. On the (very few) occasions where I don't have enough in my checking account to cover the bill, it's paid as soon as my paycheck is deposited.

This does not apply to the credit card bill - that gets whatever is left after everything else is paid. I'm about to get it down to three figures, however. Then I will just pay it electronically as soon as each purchase shows up, to prevent it from building up to unmanageable proportions again.

timepiece

My paycheck is always deposited by the 30th (28 in February) and the 15th.

Somewhere between the 1st and 5th of the month I pay all my bills online except my primary credit card.
I have it scheduled to be due on the 17 so I schedule it to be paid on the 16th.

Since I get direct deposit to my checking account, all my payments come straight out of there. Occasionally I need to move a little money from savings, but more typically I skim a little out of checking and just leave a small buffer.

Bob Brown

@penguiniator: My credit card company HATES me....lol. I always pay them completely off twice a month. That way, I don't have to pay any interest at all. This only works if you don't carry a balance, btw

Flame

I'm paid every other as well. I set it up so my bills get done that night (Wed, for me). The two 'blue moon' paychecks each year sit in the account until the next paycheck and bill-paying time so I can use it to hit the bills harder. I'm working on getting out of debt, so this helps me quite a bit.

The main thing for me is to remember to pay off the expensive debts first. The car and school loans have super-low rates, so they get minimum payments. The CCs cost more, especially the store cards, so they get priority. Focus on paying one off at a time and minimums to the others. Part of the month, it will seem like you're flush with lots of money in the bank. But when you dump it all on the target debt, you'll be glad you didn't waist it; you'll feel great really seeing the debt go down. Finish one, start hammering the next target. And don't build the debt back up! That's the mistake I keep making, but I have friends overseas I like to go visit.

Another helper can be those credit card checks they love to send out. I almost told them to never send me those things again, but I realized they can help... IF USED CORRECTLY. It's tricky, so look at the situation (interest, fees, term length, default rules) very closely. There is usually a fee for them, so make sure the savings gained via the low interest rate offered on them isn't destroyed by the fee. If there is no fee, or the fee is low enough, you can use these to transfer the balance from a more expensive debt. You also need to be very mindful of the term length for the low interest rate. If it goes back up too soon, it could cost you more than not doing this at all. 99.999% of these get shredded and tossed, but a few meet my requirements and help drop my debt load. Don't ever use them for something like your school loan. Depending on the source of your school loan, there are various important protections in place that you do not ever want to lose, especially in today's disturbing economy.

hnkelley

I use the envelope method of budgeting. So I save half a bill every paycheck. I budget in things like eating out, gas, misc, and play money. That way I have money to have fun, and ensure that I have money to pay the bills. www.goingCarless.com

ErasmusDelita

Bank of America's online banking is a godsend for this sort of thing, I haven't overdrafted or paid a bill late in years

dragynphyre