How to Budget on a Biweekly Income (Without Losing Your Mind)

 It’s not about I pay the bills on this day because I got paid. It’s just I have, I’m keeping money in a Bills account so the bills can come out automatically whenever they’re due.   look at her face when you just said the word budget. 

I am ashamed. I’ve been trying to do this for a long time. I will be very frank. 

 You have to do it in that order so you can see what’s available. And if you have a set, we want your Bills account to be completely separate from a spending account. That way, like we said, you can have the money going in there, paying the bills while you’re working your 24 hour, 36,000 hour shifts or whatever, so you don’t have to worry about it.  So you’re gonna have a gas and groceries card. gonna have a checking account for gas and groceries, and you’ll have a debit card to that. So you’re gonna have a specific amount of money going into that.

 Transfers that you’re gonna make are based on when you get paid. So if you need a thousand dollars for groceries, you’re gonna make $500 transfer when your first check comes in. 

​ Thank you so much for the show. We’re excited to talk today.

Tell us what brings you to the call and how we can help. 

Essentially what I wanted was just, I guess guidance and assistance with I guess now planning out how to budget my income now that I’m on a biweekly income schedule. I’m a nurse. So I just wanted some help with that. And also. If I’m not mistaken, I also wanted I guess feedback response on the thoughts or suggestion on the credit card balances that I have.

One of them I did a balance transfer for, and I believe the a PR, the introductory a PR is gonna expire in April, and then that interest rate is gonna like skyrocket through. 

Are they back dating the interests? Some of them are and some of ’em aren’t. 

No, they’re not going to. It’s with Citibank, I believe it’s gonna go to either 29 or 30% 

but are they gonna start that interest from April itself? Are they gonna back date it 

From April.  

That’s like the new thing, which I’m actually really excited about because the old days I used to do that, so it’s awesome. Okay. Yeah, so question you were talking about we’ll tackle the biweekly checks first.

Okay. 

tell us when your next payday is. 

I believe, okay, the last one was last week, Thursday, so it’s gonna be next week, I believe, the 13th. 

Okay. And then the 27th. 

Yes. 

Okay, perfect. So could you theoretically pay all your bills with you previously got and this paycheck that’s coming in on the 13th of March and not have to touch the 27th 

There’s a possibility. 

Yeah. Oh, that’s a song. That’s a song. Yeah. It’s from the Twilight soundtrack. I just went, there’s a poss Anyway. 

Sorry, I’m not able to see both of your faces. 

Okay. So what we want you to do is, even though you’re getting in the biweekly, it is going, it does feel different, but it is not gonna act different if we can help it. So what Vanessa’s saying is that check that you got on the 27th. That was hopefully if we can do it right, the first check we for March.

Okay.

And the 13th, we’re gonna put both of those checks in the budget, and then we’re gonna list out all the debts, all the bills, the spending that we’re gonna do, and any savings that we might have. And see, does it all fit within a month? Okay. Can I, am I making the budget work that way? And then from there we can go break break down your spending and your savings transfers bi biweekly, but, but we really wanna think still a whole, so if you think about you, we want you to open a Bills account. Okay. And we want you to, all of your income go in there and it’s just paying your bills.

Whenever the bills come due. It’s not about I pay the bills on this day because I got paid. It’s just I have, I’m keeping money in a Bills account so the bills can come out automatically whenever they’re due. And then I also happen to transfer myself some, spending money for the different things I need to spend money on.

That way I know I have money to spend, I know my bills are paid. Ta-da. So people get really tripped up on using the month’s previous paycheck. We even got an email. It was like what budget month do I put that in? And it’s it doesn’t matter. Sorry. It’s just okay. It doesn’t matter.

Like the, when that paycheck comes in, you’re trying to figure out which month are you using that paycheck for? 

Yeah, like that part I understand because you just mentioned that. I did, and I noticed it right before the call today that I got that check at the end of February, which technically didn’t even to me like feel like a check for February because I’m gonna use it for March’s expenses, so it doesn’t even. 

So then you are already a paycheck ahead, like you did that good job. So then that means you should have two paychecks for March, which is that one that came in on February 27th, and that one that’s gonna come in on March 13th. And that should be all of the money that you need for bills. For the month of March. 

Okay, 

and then on payday, we’re gonna look at like, how much spending money do I need for every pay cycle? And then that comes out right verse on your paydays. 

and what does that mean? 

Yeah. So that’s why have you so we want you to do a simple one page budget. Okay. So you’re gonna list your two, your paychecks, any income you get, really, but look at her face when you just said the word budget. 

I am ashamed. I’ve been trying to do this for a long time. I will be very frank. 

listen, you got this. It’s okay. 

Yeah. I’ve been, 

is the time, this new pay cycle, you’re a nurse and that’s what we were just talking to a clinical psychologist before 

oh, wow. 

all filled up with nurse stuff, okay? And you don’t have the time or desire to do the budget, but we want you to do it like one time, set it up automatic so that you can just use all your brain calories for nursing.

Okay? 

Yeah. And I. 

So go ahead. 

I’m so sorry. So I did also wanna let you know that I do have two jobs. I have a main job which I started, which is like where all my insurance and like everything’s coming out of. Then I have a per diem job that I do on Saturdays and some holidays or basically like one to two Saturdays a month.

I’m doing that and. 

Are always working. 

And basically the good thing with that is this, the pay actually comes in on the same week as this job. So that’s actually, like I, when I use like a planner to let me know when I get paid, so that’s  

so you’re gonna wanna go to our website, it’s budget essays.com/budget template. And there’s a one page budget. And we want you to use that to think very simply of it, right? You’re gonna put all of the income that you’re making or that you’re planning to make in March, whether it’s for the per diem job or the regular job.

All of it goes in there. You’re gonna list out your bills and debts and no, nobody wants to do this, but it’s gonna really let you know how much money you have to work with, right? Because we need to take those out first, and then we have what’s left over. We know that we can divide that up between spending savings and paying off extra credit card debt like we talked about.

 Yeah. 

You have to do it in that order so you can see what’s available. And if you have a set, we want your Bills account to be completely separate from a spending account. That way, like we said, you can have the money going in there, paying the bills while you’re working your 24 hour, 36,000 hour shifts or whatever, so you don’t have to worry about it. You, the money’s gonna be happening, and then you’ll just have money in your spending accounts. That’s all you have to manage. So when, what Shana was talking about, like the money is coming into the Bills account, we want you to have that separate Bills account and

Transferring out to your spending accounts. Let’s just say two. Okay? So you’re gonna have a gas and groceries card. gonna have a checking account for gas and groceries, and you’ll have a debit card to that. So you’re gonna have a specific amount of money going into that. We’ll get, I’ll talk more specifically about that in a minute.

And then you’ll have another account for all your spending money. This is for you to get facials, get your hair done, get your nails done, go to Target, Starbucks, whatever. You are gonna have a certain amount of money every month getting transferred into there. And those like your spending accounts, those the transfer dates on those are based on your payday.

Transfer money into those spending accounts based on when you get paid. So we always tell people, and it’s the same for extra money on debt, like Shana said, when you get paid, you subtract all of your minimum debt payments, all of your bills, and then what’s left over is spending savings and extra on debt.

Transfers that you’re gonna make are based on when you get paid. So if you need a thousand dollars for groceries, you’re gonna make $500 transfer when your first check comes in. 

You split it up. 

Yeah. And so the goal here is to make it so sometimes your bills are all over the place, right? You might have a lot of ’em do.

In the beginning of the month, not as much. We wanna make it to where it’s all very consistent. You’re always putting money in the bills account. The bills are always getting paid, but then every two weeks, every the 27th, the 13th, and then again on the 27th, like you’re just getting money and you’re spending money for your groceries.

So you just know I have to live in this for two 

And then. 

get refunded. It’s gonna get refunded. And then it takes out any of the rollercoaster, especially as a nurse, because your income does fluctuate. That way you’ll know I always have this money. And then when you do look at the budget, if you were able to get in a couple holidays or extra, you got paid more.

This is extra. ’cause I already always have my spending. I already always pay my bills. This extra money I can decide what I wanna do specifically with. And people like their mindset right now is this paycheck plays these bills, this paycheck plays. We wanna shift that mindset and go, okay, no, this paycheck is for this spending.

This paycheck is for this savings. So it no longer matters which paychecks are paying what bills. Like Shana said, that’s all going into the Bills account, and bills are just coming out whenever. We’re shifting our mindset now to every time I get paid, all of my spending accounts get replenished

account, 

at a separate percentage basically. That way they always stay replenished. Is that correct? 

not, yeah I see what you’re saying, but not by percentage. ’cause we’re, every single person’s budget is different, so we can’t say you should always be saving 20%. No. Like your budget may not allow that. It’s based on what, how much money you have available to you. Yeah. After you pay your debt payments and pay your bill payments.

So let’s just do like some basic math. Basically. Let’s say you got paid $8,000 a month, whatever. Let’s say your bills between rent, utilities, insurance, credit card payment. Those come out to $5,000 a month, right? So we know you have $3,000 left over. We’re gonna use that strategically to fund for groceries, to fund, for spending money.

Vanessa said, all the fun stuff. If there’s any savings that we need to do specifically save for stuff,

That’s that $3,000. So let’s say it was a thousand dollars for groceries a thousand dollars for savings we’re, we can get specific about that. And we’re just gonna be, have fun.

You’re gonna have a thousand dollars in spending money. That’s a lot. That means every paycheck. Every payday, you just transfer 500 into each one of those. You transfer 500 for savings, 500 for groceries, 500 to your spending. And every two weeks it’s on the same cycle. And that’s how it that’s how we budget monthly, even though you get paid every two weeks.

Does that make sense? 

That way basically whatever happens, there’s always money in this account. So if you don’t spend all the grocery money, there’s still leftover. If you spend, 

just rolls over. 

it just keeps rolling over. And then basically, I. 

in on March 27th, right? So now you know that, hey, that is gonna be for April’s bills, but your spending is going to start on March 27th. So when you go to make April’s budget, you’re gonna say, I’m using March 27th, paycheck and April, whatever’s paycheck, right?

That ’cause we’re only gonna use two. And you’re gonna go ahead and start your spending for April, but it’s just the three days. Does it matter that it’s three days in March? Trying to get outta that like small minded mindset about it. I wanna get to the credit card question, but the only other thing that people sometimes have a hi hiccup with this is that money is gonna sit in there.

So right now you got paid on the 27th, your April bill or your March bills aren’t gonna start till the first. 

Yeah, my phone bill already came out. 

Yeah. Yeah. like the money’s just sitting there ready to pay bills. Don’t think that I need to do something with that money. Don’t try to spend it.

You live over there, you’re gonna have separate account for your spending. That’s where you like, that’s where you live. Just let the money pile up in the Bills account. So that all the bills can get paid. ’cause sometimes we see that extra and we think I should probably do something. But no, all your bills.

That’s why we wanna do all of that math on one paper because once we get all those bills listed out, we know if I have this much money in my Bills account all the time, it’ll, they’ll always get paid and I won’t 

It’ll never be a overdraft. There’ll never be a late fee, everything. 

always getting, spending money on payday. That is the best part.

And I’m not just talking about specific personal spending money. I’m talking about gas and groceries. And if you have kids, you the ability to eat right. If the kids need something. And so it’s just, and I, we had a client one time, she said the idea of knowing that my gas and groceries account was gonna get refunded every two weeks, like automatically.

And if I run outta milk, it’s not the scarcity mindset of oh, I don’t know when we’re gonna get more money in there. No, I, I know now that I can wait one day before I go buy it because it’s gonna get replenished 

That is a nice feeling.

 Hey guys. In case we haven’t met yet, I’m Shana.

And I’m Vanessa. We’re the budget besties. We’re best friends and master financial coaches and we love talking about the B word. We help women who make good money but have nothing to show for it. Finally, set up a budget system that fits their bougie lifestyle. If you’re liking this so far, hit the subscribe button and stick around.

Your budget is about to get a major glow up.  

Rep. Exactly. It such peace. It is a nice feeling because yeah, speaking from someone who’s okay, what beans and rice and ramen can we eat because we have no grocery money? very nice. Yeah.

 Okay. But let’s move to the credit card. Question. The idea would be o obviously to pay off as much as you can on that one.  

Yeah. 

what your question is? Do you have other credit cards  

yes. I was in grad school for about two and a half years, so I was using those to like supplement income when I was working part-time. And now I’m working back full-time in schools on hold, and I’m left with the damage of keeping myself alive in grad school. The Discover card I think is six and change, not 66,000 and change.

And then the Citibank card is 9,000 and change. 

Okay. Okay, and which one is the zero? You only have the two. 

Only those two, my paid off my care credit and those other stuff already. 

That’s awesome. Good. Okay, so the first thing is to get on this budget. So you never feel like you have to, you know how to manage your money and you never feel like you have to use credit again. Obviously, being in graduate school was a whole different life then but still getting

and not, and being your own bank and not feeling like you have to use credit, that’s the first step.

But so you have is one of them. of them is a zero balance or 0% until whatever April. 

Until April. Yeah there’s only, I think, 0.99% interest being charged on that one until April. And then, yeah, and then, 

one is the card? 

I’m sorry, 

Which one is the Citi card? 

the 9,000 

We’ve had really good luck with clients calling them and talking to them, and then making some type of plan with them. 

and. 

Really good. Yeah. Citi almost always will lower the payment and give you a 0%. Or not, I shouldn’t say almost always, but we’ve had lots of clients that have had that happen. You could try for that. But is your question, should I pay off the 0% one because it’s about to be really high, or what is the question about the credit 

I guess my question is how to tackle that. Along with all the other budgeting things I’m doing, like you just said, try calling them to either get the interest to be lower because I don’t plan to use that card. The mon, like the ba, it was a balance transfer, so it’s just sitting there and I’m just paying it off.

So I guess I just wanna know like the best way to tackle that while not feeling like you said, I have to be eating ramen because I do wanna pay this off quickly. And then I also have discovered a payoff, which is I think 20% in change. 

Okay. Yeah, I think the first thing that you need to do is obviously make that budget On that template. You’ve got to see all the money coming in and all the money going out in a month.

To get that bird’s eye view.

Then from there, once you know how much you cost. Okay? That’s the idea.

We need to know how much I cost before I need, before I know how much extra I can put on debt consistently every month, and how quick I can pay that off. So once you know all those numbers, then what if you make this and you’re like, oh my gosh, I literally have a thousand dollars every month that I can put extra on this card like that.

That’d be huge to

And that’s the thing, like the way that we teach the budget is you have your income and then we’re subtracting the debts, then we’re subtracting the bills. You’re coming up with your amounts for spending. So like that $8,000 example that I gave, if you were like, okay, I’m gonna live on $200. Of spending a month, but just little. It’s a little, but then you would know you had $800 you could put towards debt every month. That’s why you need to see all the numbers on one piece of paper. ’cause it’s gonna tell you, okay, you know the truth is actually I only have $200. I can put extra. Or it’s gonna tell you, like when I said actually, when I put it all on paper and I plan accordingly, I actually have a thousand dollars that has been like disappearing up until now.

But because I’m being on purpose and I’m being intentional now, I know I can put that on debt every month. And I had a client her name was Monique. We actually had a depo. She did a, she came on and did a podcast testimonial with us. And so you could probably look 

I’ve been listening to your podcast. I really do enjoy it. That’s what got me here. 

Yay. Thank you. But she was a nurse and she’s amazing. I love her. She’s a firefighter, but she so what we did, ’cause she was like, you, she had two separate nursing jobs, one full-time, and the other one was kinda like here and there. And so what we tried to do was make her budget off of just her main income.

And then the, all of the income coming in from the second job was like, how much of that can we put towards debt every single month? And most of the time it was like 90% of it we could put on debt extra. it gave her an idea of okay, if I work three days a week versus four days a week extra now I know how much more that’s gonna get me ahead.

Yeah.

Can give you a plan too. 

I remember, I think it was one of the episodes that you guys mentioned, that when I fill out the buzzard sheet, I should only put the minimum. 

on 

Payment, 

credit card payments? Yeah. 

Now at first. And I just kind wanted to understand that. And the second question is calling Citi, is there like a certain thing I should ask for?

’cause I’m not really like that versed in. Usually if I’m calling it’s okay, a charge is wrong. Not calling to,  

good. So the first thing you wanna remember is you wanna call them when you have a balance due, because if your balance is paid off that month or paid for that month, and you have a zero balance due, then they won’t really help you because they’re like you paid your balance, everything’s fine.

You’re your current payment. Your payment, i’m sorry when your payment is due. So call when your payment is due. The second thing is you wanna ask for a deferred payment or a reduced interest rate and or a reduced monthly minimum payment. Yeah. So mostly, so what you’re gonna say is, for example, is say we wanna, we want to say, I’m trying to get on my budget. I’m trying to get it straight. Can you help me out?

 And, 

saying, like something like to that, that you’re not necessarily in a financial hardship, but it’s something to that extent. I’m, just got outta graduate school.

I’m trying to get this budget set or whatever. You don’t have to give ’em a lot of detail, but you need some way to open the conversation, obviously.

You just say. I, you can say, I have a friend, a budget bestie now that I didn’t know if you could offer me what they got, which was, a reduced interest rate and a reduced payment while I’m trying really hard diligently to pay this.

Pay this bill for you guys. And then they’ll see. They’ll see, usually they already know if they’re gonna help you or not. Like it’s, it shouldn’t be too long of a conversation. We did have, Monique said that she called back five times before quote. Somebody would help her or she found somebody would help her.

She did give up. Yeah, she give up. Yeah. So that was funny. But other clients have been really successful. Call one, so it just depends. It’s worth a try. But the other question about minimum, so the reason we do the minimum, so we’re trying to see. What you can afford to pay extra. We know you have to pay the minimum, right?

That is a bill. That’s gonna be every month. So once we have done income minus debt payments, minus bills, minus spending, minus savings, we have a number that’s over. Hopefully we have some money left over.

Number that we’re gonna put extra on debt. But we don’t know that until we pay for everything else in the month. Until we see what everything else is costing. And that’s why we do the extra. Once we figure that part out, we’re

To pull all our money together. So right now, if you’re monthly minimum payment, I’m just throwing this out there it’s saying you owe a hundred dollars a month, but oh I always pay 150.

We don’t wanna do that. We wanna put in the budget what your bare minimum is. And if you have a reoccurring payment going out, that is more than the minimum. We wanna take that down to

The bare minimum. We’re trying to pool all of our money to be able to say, okay, if I have all of this, what can I do with it?

It’s gonna make a huge difference when you chunk it all together versus trying to spread it out here and there. 

That’s actually exactly what I’ve been doing. I’m like, okay let’s like dump a whole bunch of money here. And then the rest of the month I’m like, oh my God, where’s this, where’s that? And then it’s just the cycle. Repeat. Yeah. Thank you. 

Did that help? We’re so happy that you called. Thank you for, we know that whatever question you had other listeners are going to have as well. So we know that it was definitely valuable. So thank you for coming in and sharing your story. 

Thank you. I really do appreciate it. And for the the template I don’t think I got to that part of the website. Is it like a self-explanatory version? Do I have to go to the coaching as well too if I wanted, like what would you recommend?

That’s a good

The co so the budget template is just a free one page.

Oh,

categories that we have, so you can, it’s a free, printable, downloadable that you can just punch all your stuff in. But version yeah. It’s the upgraded version, but no. We have an upgraded version.

You can buy that.

okay.

Gives, you don’t have to necessarily do coaching. You can buy that, you can get the, it has comes with videos that train you how to do it. Like the whole

The free printable is just to get you started. But if you really wanna get. This whole thing automated and awesome.

Like you would get the budget system, which is at budget.com/budget. So that, that would be like the next step. I think that would be really good. And then we do have some group coaching that you could get some help, as you implement it all. So yeah, we have weekly coaching with Michelle that’s in our that is.

It is free. We advertise it in our Facebook group, but it’s not through Facebook. So you can access it anywhere. And then when you, if you buy the simplified budget system, you get monthly coaching with us,

Helps you work through that and you have lifetime access to it. And it’s just a really great program, like Shannon said, has all the trainings helps you walk through it.

And how much is that budget system?

It’s 1 97 for lifetime access. Yep. Interesting. Something to think about. Yeah. All right. Little investment in you. Yeah. And the other thing that we know is the cool thing about, there’s a lot of cool things about being a nurse, so God bless you for doing that. But you have the ability to make more money if you want, which is sometimes a unique thing a lot.

Sometimes people can’t do that. And so when you make this budget, when you get on this deal, know that all of these extra shifts that you pick up. It’s going toward a purpose. And it’s for a season, so you might be working a lot more until you get these credit card payments and then you can throttle back a little bit.

If you want to, you can accelerate that process based on how much you work.

We’re wishing you luck. We know you can do it. We’re excited.

thank you.

email us if you have further questions. We didn’t explain it, or you’re, you get stuck again. Okay.

No, thank you. I just I think the last question I had was you were mentioning that I should call before the payment is due or call on the day the payment is due.

You just have to call when you have a payment due. So if you

Like if it already payment, you have to wait until the payment generates again for April. You actually have to have a balance due before you call.

Okay. Great. So I can call anytime before the 10th then. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.