All-purpose personal finance management / budget thread

I now get paid weekly, and as simple as it ought to be I have a hard time getting my mind around how best to budget. I mean I get the concept of multiplying my weekly paycheck x 52 and dividing by 12 to get my "monthly income" but the reality is that I have 8 four-paycheck months and four five-paycheck months. But bills tend to be monthly, whereas expenses like food are weekly. So what's the best way to do things? Should I try to just budget as though I have four-paycheck months every month and then treat the five-paycheck months as savings opportunities or times to pay for big expenses or something?

Yeah.

Sounds good to me. It also helps to track your spending very closely, by categories, for three or four months, so you can see what your normal expenses amount to and if you are splurging too much. Don't forget to account for necessary but infrequent expenses, like new shoes.

yeah we've used Mint for a while to track expenses so I have some idea of them

Our new experiment is going to be having two checking accounts and paying only fixed bills on credit cards. We've never gotten into actual debt but we've had to use savings at times to pay credit card bills where we've overspent (we pay off every month in full) and we're a little too lax about following budgets we've made in the past. All monthly bills, housing expenses, food etc. are going to be out of one account, as well as some monthly savings for larger expenses and emergencies, and stuff that's more variable and less necessary is going to come out of the other account. Trying now to figure out how to split the paychecks and that's when it occurred to me that budgeting as though I have equally divided monthly income might contribute to our overspending.

*paying fixed bills on credit cards for credit score/points and then immediately paying them off out of the fixed checking account

This doesn't directly address your question, but one trick I use is to work backwards from "savings" to checking. All my work income goes into my business account, which I think of and treat as a savings account. Obviously business expenses come out of that account, but I don't make any personal expenditures out of it at all. I transfer money from the business account to the joint household checking as needed, just enough to keep that balance high enough not to incur acct. maintenance fees. The business checking balance generally manages to creep upward (unless I've had a really expensive year like this year). Treating every dollar as savings until it's forced to be spent for household needs has been pretty effective.

After barely saving money in my first year of full time work, I've started to give myself an allowance. as soon as my (monthly) paycheck gets deposited I pay rent + bills, then put the rest minus my monthly allowance in a hard-to-reach account.

If it turned out paying some kind of service to comprehensively manage your finances for you costs you less than doing it yourself, would you do it, or is it more important to maintain total control?

But bills tend to be monthly, whereas expenses like food are weekly. So what's the best way to do things? Should I try to just budget as though I have four-paycheck months every month and then treat the five-paycheck months as savings opportunities or times to pay for big expenses or something?

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Wednesday, October 19, 2016 11:46 AM (one hour ago)

You shouldn't wait to spend money on "big expenses" if the wait is costing you more in terms of "making do" -- does budgeting on a monthly basis even make sense? Maybe try doing so quarterly, or thinking about certain categories of expenses in different time frames? Like, budget $100 a week for food (for example) but at the same time, figure out a monthly amount of "discretionary funds" (the difference between average monthly income and fixed expenses) or a quarterly one, for things like gifts, entertainment, etc.

The two-checking-account system is really working well so far, I think it's curbed our spending dramatically. Knowing all of the spending comes from the same place and that there's no using a credit card to "cheat" really helps me not buy lunch out, not get takeout when we have food in the fridge, etc.

Is it too late for me to be a career diplomat and retire at 50 on a $68k pension in umm … two years time?

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/retired-foreign-service-officer-pittsburgh-pa-salary-pension-money-diary

That week’s diary is so dull for 50 years old though!

I’d take it.

New maxo cream is pretty good

Reading the comments - I see i I'm very much in the minority, and almost everyone thought it was an ideal and soothing lifestyle. Maybe I need to pause for thought ..... There should probably be another thread on how much does your personal fear of boredom influence or impact on your financial security and retirement plans.

Man if im bored in retirement itll be because i choose to be

honestly my fear/aversion to boredom is why I have never settled down and done the full-time job that pays well and has good benefits thing. ... 50 is not too far off tbh. So, I don't really have retirement plans because I'm not planning on retiring any time soon, partly because of the type of work I do/employment path, and also because I kinda like what I do for work, and if I stop liking it, I feel capable of doing something else?

The covid lockdown has made me reconsider what retirement might be like in practice. I can see that I might want a decent period of rest/holiday after working for 40 years - but a permanent stop is no longer so appealing.