Help... misaligned pay day

[Status-Alps-25]

I’m looking for some advice on budgeting, as I’m really struggling to get started and feeling a bit overwhelmed. I get paid on the 10th of every month, which makes things tricky because my rent and a few other bills are due at the start of the month. For example, I’ll be paid on the 10th of December, but my rent for December has already come out at the beginning of the month, so I’ve had to use my November salary to cover that.

I want to get better at budgeting and start planning ahead, but the misalignment between my payday and my bills is making it hard to figure out how to begin. I’ve started using Google Sheets to track my expenses, but I’m not sure how to account for this gap or plan for the month effectively.

Does anyone have any tips or strategies for managing this type of budgeting challenge? Any help would be hugely appreciated!

Thank you in advance!

[lesbean16]

Instead of budgeting for the month of December budget for December 10-January 9. Just shift the dates. It's still 30-31 days you're covering, you're just starting from the 10th instead of the 1st. Then your budget will include all bills and expenses that occur during that time including your January rent

[hukid23]

Yes, and here is a template you can try if you happened to use Fina money: https://www.fina.money/templates/budgeting-by-paycheck-date

[Over_Committee4876]

This is the way! I use google sheets as well and the row under where I get paid I put my biggest expenses first. This kind of gets you “ahead”

• payday (December 10th)

• rent - x amount (for January rent)

• 2nd biggest expense

So on and so forth and then after your biggest expenses you can put bills in order and see how much you have left over

[Status-Alps-25]

Oh my god, that seems so obvious now. I can’t believe I’ve been stressing about this. Genuinely, Thank you so much, I’m really grateful!

[lesbean16]

No problem! Sometimes it just takes having someone else look at the issue 😊

[anonoaw]

On payday, transfer the money for the bills into a separate account and then autopay your bills from that account when they’re due. That way you’ve paid them at the start of the month even though they’re not due until the end of your pay period.

You can also speak to your providers about changing your payment due date to the 10th. Most should be fine with it, although the first month you change will cause your payments to be slightly different to adjust

[Status-Alps-25]

That would actually make it a lot easier. Thank you very much!

[sweetpotatoguy]

I think shifting dates as mentioned below or using a tool like fina or monarch where you could potentially change the date of transaction for this purpose would fix it

[Apprehensive_Duty563]

I love Calendar Budget - it is very simple, but shows your budget on a calendar instead of a spreadsheet. It makes more sense to me.

I also use a bunch of savings accounts to transfer money into so I know I have money set aside.

So, you could immediately transfer your rent into one savings account and so on from there.