There were a couple of years when I got paid weekly and I loved it. My current schedule is every other week, and it’s kind of a pain right now. The rent and school fees are due on the first, regardless of when the paycheck comes, so I have to constantly check to make sure which paycheck to set aside. I actually earn jsut enough to be able to meet my bills, but two paychecks per year are “Catch-up checks” and I have to wait for them to appear rather thanhaving the money spread evenly over every monthly bill cycle.
As always, if money wasn’t tight it wouldn’t matter so much. But it is, and I’m scheduled/budgeted to the penny. A pay schedule that matched the bill schedule (i.e. monthly, bi-monthly or weekly) would be much, much easier.
I don’t really care that much how I’m paid. I keep a fairly decent buffer in the account, and have my pay direct deposited, and all my bills and investing on auto schedules. I keep a fairly accurate mental picture of the level, and stick pretty closely to a budget for incidental spending(groceries, bars, toys). I am a pretty passive manager of it, mostly as long as Mr. ATM lets me have some of my money when I ask for it it’s all good.
Except for three paycheck months(which this month is again, yay again ) when I have to give some thought what to do with the extra.
I’m with the others who don’t really care. I’ve never spent anywhere close to what I make, and that includes living off a grad student stipend that was less than minimum wage, given the hours I worked.
If paid in advance, I’ll take the whole year, thanks. If at the end of a pay period, I guess 6-12 payments/year would be ok.
I wuld much prefer weekly, but am paid bi-weekly. Not a fan of it. I think MONTHLY would be easier- pay all the bills the first of the month and what’s left over, divide up by weeks for expenses.
I think weekly would be ideal for me. I’m currently paid bi-weekly and that works O.K. Last year I thought maybe being paid monthly would be better, since my budget and many of my bills are monthly. By August I had the equivalent of an additional paycheck saved up, so on September 1, I combined that with my actual paycheck and paid myself one month’s salary. I then held my September 15 paycheck to be used to pay a month’s salary on October 1. By October 15, I didn’t have enough money left, and needed to dip into my October 15 paycheck. And that was the end of that experiment.
I like every two weeks which I’ve been on since residency (when I finally got a real paycheck) except for my fellowship year when it was every month. I automatically consider the first check of the month the mortgage/bills check and set up my automatic payments to come out early in the month.
I get paid monthly, which I really prefer for really psychological reasons: the bills are all on a monthly cycle, and I like to have a clear payday that starts the fiscal month. But we’ve got enough of a buffer that it isn’t a practical concern.
If it were possible, I’d like to be paid continuously, or pretty close to it.
It’s all deposited electronically anyway, so why not move smaller amounts of money more frequently? I get paid every two weeks, so why not divide the amounts by 14, and pay me that much each day? Or divide again by 24, and pay me that much each hour of the day and night? Or divide by an additional factor of 60, and pay me that much each minute? Or…
It’s all deposited electronically, but that doesn’t mean it’s all done automatically - there’s still a bunch of people who have to do a bunch of things to make sure the right money goes into the right account, and I don’t think they want to start doing that daily.
I usually get paid weekly (very weakly! Hah!), and I love it. Like Joey P said, it feels like money is always coming in then, and if you run short, the next payday is right around the corner.
I am one of the owners of a business. My profit distributions come as regularly (and as heavily) as rainstorms in the Australian outback. Overall, I do very well and I’m not complaining but it’s one of those basic known bugs in the human brain MkI that when you see regular bills (tax bills in particular) going out, that seems to impact on your perception far more heavily than the irregular amounts coming in. The end result is I always feel worse off than I am.
Barring that, either weekly or bi-weekly work for me. At the moment, my wife gets paid weekly and I every other week, which is a nice situation; the weekly pay gives us consistent cash, the biweekly is easier to budget for big stuff.
) when I have to give some thought what to do with the extra.
