Financial Chaos
So the place I'm working at now pays us monthly, rather than the usual fortnightly. I guess it saves them on payroll costs or something. At first I didn't really care, the money all goes through, right? But now it's starting to piss me off. It makes managing your finances surprisingly much harder.
Previously I'd sort of managed things in a very loose fashion, I'd noted the balance when my pay went in and as long as next time my pay went in I ended up at the same or a higher balance, I was happy. If the balance was lower I'd go back and figure out if I'd splurged on something. Any increase in balance went into a savings account. As long as I kept a reasonable 'buffer' in the transaction account, dealing with sudden costs was easy because it would always be less than two weeks till my next pay came along.
Now though, it's much harder. The pay comes along less often and to run things the same way I need a much larger buffer. Any splurge I make may not be made up for up to four weeks. So sometimes there's now a requirement for me to juggle money back and forth between account to make up shortfalls in one until pay comes through and I can even them out again. I still have plenty of money in my savings accounts to do this with, but it's quite a pain and makes keeping track of where money is supposed to be that much harder.
Previously I'd sort of managed things in a very loose fashion, I'd noted the balance when my pay went in and as long as next time my pay went in I ended up at the same or a higher balance, I was happy. If the balance was lower I'd go back and figure out if I'd splurged on something. Any increase in balance went into a savings account. As long as I kept a reasonable 'buffer' in the transaction account, dealing with sudden costs was easy because it would always be less than two weeks till my next pay came along.
Now though, it's much harder. The pay comes along less often and to run things the same way I need a much larger buffer. Any splurge I make may not be made up for up to four weeks. So sometimes there's now a requirement for me to juggle money back and forth between account to make up shortfalls in one until pay comes through and I can even them out again. I still have plenty of money in my savings accounts to do this with, but it's quite a pain and makes keeping track of where money is supposed to be that much harder.