How to adjust from monthly to weekly pay?

[Vindicated2021]

Just that really!

DH has gone from monthly to weekly which means our spending habits have changed. We are not spending more from what I can work out!

We always lived payday to payday before with nothing left over, but despite being paid ever so slightly more (extra petrol costs negate the rise) we seem to be struggling more than ever, despite having more per WEEK than what we did before and I don't understand why. Any tips?

Is it because direct debits are coming out monthly so you need to leave money in the account for particular payments?

As above, it's probably because payment cycles for bills are monthly and therefore come out in bigger amounts.

You really need a few weeks of living really frugally to adjust, and create a 'buffer' for direct debits. Reduce your day to day spending to the bone, top up petrol £10 or £20 at a time instead of a full tank. Raid the cupboards and freezer for meals and delay shopping as long as you can. When you do shop, meal plan very strictly to reduce waste and cut out meat and alcohol. Once you adjust and have a bit of a safety net with money you can go back to normal.

When my partner used to be in weekly I worked out what was needed for bills and food shop and put into another account and transferred back for payday.
Give yourself an allowance each week for petrol and little bits you may need between food shops.
Anything left over put away for emergencies

Bill day not payday

I was paid weekly for a while and I used to move the bulk of money to our bills account so it would be there for the 1st the month when the bills came out. I would get a separate bills account and just move the majority of the money over there apart from a small amount for spending day to day. That means your bill money is there for when it’s needed. For example I was paid £450 a week, I moved £400 straight over to bills and £50was my train ticket and day to day cash. Then on the 1st there was enough to cover all my bills coming out as I had been topping up the account.

Do you have a monthly wage? Just wondering if it would be easier to then use your monthly wage to pay direct debits, and DHS weekly wage for day to day spends (food/fuel etc).

You need to get a month ahead as such yes.

Our bills come out of a separate account and he drip feeds into it every week so by the time the big bills come out they are all covered. No issue with that one. It's the day to day stuff/remaining money. Apologies, should have made that clearer.

Think for one week we are just going to have to spend barely anything/make do and then just top that up each week.

I think shopping may be a big issue. We used to do one big monthly shop when he got paid and that lasted us, whereas now I'm shopping weekly and getting less but spending more. Bloody hate money!!

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

Yes I do, but only part time and doesn't cover anywhere near enough bills wise. We private rent in SE and literally my wage would cover rent and that's it. Nothing else.

Where do you shop?
The likes of lidl and aldi you can get a lot more for your money than asda etc.
Takes awhile to adjust but you do crack it.
What are your essentials that you spend on through the week?
Petrol, Commute to work?

You need to work out how much is needed for the bills and food budget from his wage then anything left is the day to day cash. Our food budget is separated into our bills account so we know where every penny is and what we have to play with.

Shopping is Tesco. I've done Lidls but the one I live by is possibly one of the worst stocked Lidls I have ever been too. Constant complaints on our local FB pages about it. Such a shame because I love a Lidls bakery!! I'm one of those unlucky people that don't live close to an Aldi. We used to and I loved it, but we moved away. Good tip on including the shop in to bills 👍

My petrol is £30 a week. DH is about £70 a week. He's got a sports car that drinks petrol. When he got this new job and knowing the distances he would be travelling I gently suggested maybe he should sell and get a more economical car. His argument is that he worked his arse off for it and doesn't want to give it up. Fair enough but he can see how much it drinks and gets frustrated with it. I frequently 🤦‍♀️ at his thought process sometimes!

I went from monthly pay to fortnightly.
My phone calender is my lifesaver - I have set up different colours for different DDs on the dates they go out with a reminder the night before.

Go through the last 3 months bank statements & check for things like Amazon prime, Netflix etc & if you're not getting the value from them stop them or add them to your budget. Make a total (I rounded everything to the nearest £5 or £10 to account for any stray increases) then multiply it by 12 & divide that total by 52. This gives you the amount you have to put aside weekly (sorry, not trying to sound patronising 😬)

If you have ALL the big bills going out on the 1st of the month try & change some to the 14th to give you a bit of a buffer. Most companies are reasonably happy to change the payment date if you explain you have a new job with a different payday. They want your money at the end of the day. You may get hit with a slightly higher bill for the 1st month you change but then it should revert to the usual payment.

As soon as I get paid I transfer the amount calculated to a "holding account" to then transfer back to my main account when the reminder pops up to allow it to be paid. This stops me thinking I've got more available than I have.

I do a food shop in Lidl on a Monday - I plan to a certain degree what we're going to have. We have a "stock" of at least 3 (sometimes more) recipes for each food product (mince, sausages, chicken for example) most of these use a combination of vegetables that we buy every week. I don't buy one ingredient that is only used in one dish. Everything is multipurpose. (Hope that makes sense) I do a top up shop on Friday, usually at Morrisons or something to get things Lidl don't sell. (Mainly dry-nites pull ups & some other branded products that we prefer.) We usually have frozen pizza's on Friday & I don't have enough room in the freezer to buy them on Monday as I freeze all the meat when I buy it so I don't have to worry about short dates.

The envelope method may work for food shops if one of you always does them.

If your food bill is (example) 400pcm, then draw out 100 per week and drop it into a food shop envelope - same day every week.

As you shop, spend the money in the envelope. It should build up, which you can then use to do a monthly stock up.

I never got on board with monthly shops - had to go weekly at least for bread/milk/fruit and veg, so dodnt see the point in then doing a monthly shop on top.

I can see how it would be handy to one bulk shop for tins/cleaning products/toiletries etc but evening meals and breakfasts we do on a 7 to 10 day basis.

Another vote for shopping at Aldi. I'm always AMAZED at the saving compared to when I shopped at Tesco/S'bury/Asda.

There's a few lots actually on here who'll poo-poo Aldi or Lidl, but I've honestly been impressed by their quality, and have conducted blind taste tests with fussy teens, and Aldi nearly always won or drew.

Let's face it, the food shop is basically just stuff we're pooping out at a later date! After processing it in a kitchen we probably have to clean and depositing it in a bathroom we probably have to clean.

Once you adopt that mindset it's very difficult to be a food-snob. A Waitrose shopper simply has more expensive poo and that's nothing to boast about 😂

Also, if you get tax credits you can apply to have them paid weekly instead of monthly which helps.

A really frugal few weeks should give you the buffer you need although you might have to shop more frequently which is a pain.

If you pay for shopping, petrol and other normal regular spending on a credit card, it delays the money coming out of your bank account by a few weeks, which might give you enough of a buffer to help sort the problem.

Set up a direct debit to pay the full balance off each month and only do this if you see this as changing payment method/managing of cashflow solution, not an excuse to overspend.

Can your DH use your car for some of his commuting to cut down the fuel cost? If you're literally living month to month with little spare money, he's not in a position to have a fun and thirsty car.

Sorry, just seen your Lidl isn't that good - although more hassle try and use it for cleaning stuff and toiletries as it's way cheaper.

Could you swap cars occasionally so he's using less fuel (assuming your commute is shorter)? Selling it is probably a false economy as he'll lose money on it, and in a few months you'll hopefully have adapted to weekly pay.

I know it's obvious but 4 x weekly paydays is only 28 days so where you might be better off it has to last a bit longer? I think, a bit of brain fog this morning!

That's a good point about 4 and 5 week months. Say you're used to taking home £2000 pm and move to weekly pay with a run of 4 week months, suddenly you're having to manage on about £1850 pm which is a big drop if you don't have a lot of spare money.

However, there should be 3? 5 week months a year, so it might even out over time.

You could also try and use the 4 and 5 week months to your advantage if you can manage on the 4 weekly pay days because every time you get a 5 week month, you could put the extra pay away to pay for irregular expenses like Christmas, car repairs, insurance, emergency fund for new washing machine etc.

But if you've not reviewed your bills recently, going back to basics with the Moneysaving Expert money makeover might help you cut some expenditure and free up some spare cash.

I recently changed to four weekly pay, I was used to being paid on the 28th of the month every month so now if my pay is early as it is this month I still pay myself on the 28th.

Could you have a really frugal beans on toast omelette type month and get yourself to the position of a normal payday where you just pay yourself? Does that make any sense?

If you can have two accounts, then I would have one for bills and rent/mortgage monthly costs. Each week, move the amount into the bills account for bills, what you have left over is your money for the week. Make sure to budget for yearly expenses too like birthdays and Christmas and holidays, uniforms, clothes, even if it's a fiver a week.

This happend to us afew years back and basically we found we needed a months worth of bills money in an account and then we topped it up with some of my weekly money and partners monthly money leaving enough money in our own accounts.

I got I think it was a couple of months notice so I worked out anplan of action

• Opened another bills account
• put all outgoings to come out of it
• worked out how much we needed to pay into it each

We had a couple of very frugal months and I did some carboots, local selling sites and ebay with stuff and managed to make sure we had a good start

• then made sure we had standing orders from our own accounts to the bills account