I had a reader ask a really great question – “How can I make a budget when I get paid once a month?”
Here’s how I think you can make the Budget Binder work for you:
#1 – Pay all of your bills as soon as your once a month payment hits your account.
#2 – Figure out your weekly allowances following the instructions in the Budget Binder.
#3 – Set a date when you want to reset your weekly allowances. If you get paid on the 1st, I would go with the 1st, 9th, 16th, 23rd as your reset dates for your weekly allowance.
#4 – On your reset date, withdraw your grocery and miscellaneous allowances out of your bank in cash. Keep the Gas and Entertainment budgets in the bank.
#5 – Between reset dates, pretend you absolutely have no more money in the bank. Don’t be tempted to dip into future week’s allowances because it is already there. If you constantly dip into your bank balance for little things, consider moving everything out of your bank account at the beginning of the month into savings and transferring over your weekly allowances each week.
#6 – When figuring out your bills, consider adding in an additional ‘bill’ for unexpected expenses. It might be between $50-$100. Consider this money spent when figuring out how much is in the bank, but if something pops up during the month that wasn’t budgeted/allowed for, you would have this financial cushion to take it from. Those of us that are paid bi-weekly or weekly have the benefit of rearranging the next paycheck’s budget to cover an unexpected expense. But when you are 3-4 weeks from the next paycheck, it’ll be nice to have this cushion to pull from.
Hope this helps all of you who are only paid once a month. Let me know if you have any other ideas on how you can make this work for you.