The company I work for was recently acquired by another company. As part of the acquisition, we moved from our payroll system, which was semi-monthly, to their system, which is biweekly.
Now while I realize it’s just a different distribution (26 paydays in a year instead of 24), it almost sort of feels like a paycut until that first month where I’ll get a third check in a month - which won’t be until August. It’s not that big a deal and I can cope, but I kind of liked the regular, always consistent, twice a month paydays. (15th and last days of the month are what we had before).
I realize there are other types of pay schedules besides these two, but for the purposes of this poll I’m only interested in what you would choose between the two.
I didn’t care which I had when I wrote checks to pay my bills. Now that I use my bank’s bill pay system, I prefer the 2 fixed dates per month. This allows me to automatically pay EVERYTHING on the day after my bank receives my pay. I have set every fixed cost to pay on the 1st or 16th of each month and when my variable bills hit, I schedule them for the next pay date. Anything still in my account by the 3rd and the 17th is what I have left until the next time I get paid.
I get paid twice a month (15th and 30th) and I would much rather get paid every other Friday. The way our payroll works, it must be available on the 15th, so if the 15th is on a Sunday, then it is memo-posted (showing as pending) on Friday, or maybe Thursday night. If the 15th is a holiday, like MLK day, that just makes it all the more confusing.
It would be so much easier to know that I get paid on Friday. No, not this one, the next one.
I prefer bi-monthly. You quickly get used to living on two checks per month, and then, twice a year, you get (what feels like) a FREE PAYCHECK to do with what you please.
However, working in academia, I get paid once per month these days.
I prefer the semi monthly. House payments, car payments, utility bills, and most other large expenses are monthly.
In our early days as homeowners we were on the biweekly. That didn’t work too bad because the extra paychecks came about when property taxes were due. There is always something for extra money. Next job was bi monthly. I set up to put enough each pay in the credit union to cover the taxes.
I hated being paid weekly on one job. I was always having to run to the bank.
I used to get paid every other Friday, and I loved it. Especially when my husband got paid on the Fridays I didn’t get paid. Now I get a retirement check on the first of the month, and he gets paid twice a month - I hate it because paydays keep moving around the calendar and I always need to do some mental math to figure out when the next infusion of money appears. Biweekly was so much easier.
Several years ago I had a job where I was paid every other Friday, and I did prefer that to the twice a month arrangement at my current job. As **feppytweed **said, it was easier to remember when I’d actually be getting paid. I also liked the twice a year “bonus” third paycheck of the month.
However, like Manda JO I think I preferred getting one big paycheck per month to either the biweekly or twice monthly options.
I like weekly, too - temps usually get paid weekly. The worst paying method for me is monthly - I seem to be able to budget a lot better when I get weekly cash infusions.
Yeah, don’t care. Used to be paid once a month. Took some adjusting. Before that was paid twice a month. Took some adjusting. Now I’m paid once a week. Took some adjusting. But in the end, it is the same amount of money and I make it work.
I like biweekly. I budget based on 2 paychecks a month and then twice a year I get an extra check. This year it turns out that 1 of my extra checks coincides with my vacation. So I’m spending pretty much the entire check on a nice vacation.
I only ever worked one job, years ago, where we got paid bimonthly, and I totally miss it. Because you can have everything scheduled to come out at the same time every month, mostly.