How to budget around biweekly paychecks
Most bills come monthly. A lot of paycheques come every two weeks. That mismatch is why a monthly budget can look fine on paper and still leave you short the week before payday.
Give every bill a paycheque
Instead of budgeting by month, budget by paycheque:
- List your bills with their due dates.
- For each bill, pick the paycheque that lands before it's due, with a few days' margin.
- Add up what each paycheque has to cover. Whatever's left after bills and savings is what you can spend until the next one.
If one paycheque ends up carrying far more than the other (rent often does this), move a few smaller bills to the lighter one, or ask a company to change a due date. Most will.
The two "extra" paycheques
Paid every two weeks, you get 26 paycheques a year, not 24. So in two months of the year, you get three.
Don't count on those in your regular plan. Budget every month as if it has two paycheques, and give the third ones a job ahead of time: a debt payment, your emergency fund, next year's car insurance, Christmas.
Know what's safe to spend
The question a biweekly budget really answers is: how much can I spend between now and payday without coming up short?
That's: this paycheque, minus the bills it covers, minus savings, minus anything already spent since payday. Check it before a big purchase instead of checking your bank balance, which still includes money that's already promised to rent.
Let a spreadsheet do it
Our Paycheck Budget template works this way. Pick weekly, biweekly, twice-monthly or monthly pay; every bill lands on the paycheque that covers it; and the dashboard shows what's safe to spend until payday, with the three-paycheque months marked.
Paycheck Budget