Big bills have a nasty habit of taking up too much of your income every month. Reduce the stress and help curb spending by dividing major expenses across all your pay in a month before they’re actually due.
Money photo by Shutterstock
As personal finance blog The Budget Mama explains, if your rent is due on December 1, setting aside half of the rent money from November’s mid-month pay and the other half from the end-of-the-month pay distributes the burden across your entire budget. You don’t gain any more money, but you avoid a large expense during one part of the month. And, more importantly, you don’t have a bigger pay with “extra” money to spend:
What usually happens when there is money just left on the table? It typically becomes absorbed somewhere else in your spending because subconsciously, you have the money still on the table.
If, instead, you used half payments, you would manage to have your full car payment every month without having to scrape by. You would end up with more money in your pocket over time and your finances would become easier to manage, lessening your financial stress.
When we have extra money sitting around, most of us tend to feel like it’s available to spend. Half payments keep us from feeling like we have more income than we do. The less you feel like you’ve got money to spend, the more likely you are to save.
The Half Payment Method [The Budget Mama via Rockstar Finance]
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