Hi Greer

I have followed your blog for some time. I am also on monthly pays, have been so for nearly 6 years... And yes it took a bit to get use to but once i figured it out (monthly bills etc) I have learnt to cope well. I have mortgages (plus rental mortgages), heaps of household bills (as i rent out bedrooms in my house by room and pay all the bills bar food) so when i get paid on the 15th a good amount of money comes in but then a whole heap goes out that night and I also transfer money onto my credit card which i pay most of my bills with. I clear the balance each month so no interest costs! Another trick i learnt early on is to transfer money to savings, holiday account on pay day. So whats left in my cheque account is essentially my spending money for the month! (depending on the month i sometimes have to dip into another account - dont want to miss a good weekend away as only live the once)

I have been on monthly pays for the best part of 20 years. I do the same thing, have all the AP's go out a couple of days after payday. My budget is done as Pay in, less AP's, less estimates of irregular bills (phone, vet, etc, then the amount leftover is $X x12/52 for a weekly amount to be spent on food, petrol, and whatever. As long as you dont go over that amount each week it's not an issue.

Now on fortnightly, but did about 12 years of monthly both here & in the UK. You get used to it - I used to have 2 current accounts and a savings account, so put all my bill money in one for bills, put a % into savings all on payday and whatever was left was mine.

Must admit I prefer fortnightly though as the mortgage is fortnightly (thus squeezing extra payments in per year).

I'm on fortnightly. I also do a lot of APs the day after my pay goes in. Some payments I have going out fortnightly, and others are every 4 weeks, but they alternate (my car & contents insurances are about equal, so I have them staggered to pay 2 weeks apart). I'm flatting, so we all pay into the rent & bills a/c on our own schedule, but we have an agreed amount that we each have to pay in over the month - this includes food, phone, internet & power.

One downside of fortnightly pays is I occasionally get letters from the IRD estimating my income at something much higher than what it is - due to them discovering I got paid $X during a given month, but not checking to see whether that was a 2 pay period month or a 3 pay period. That's really not fun to try & explain, because they send a letter to Payroll as well, and then I have to go & correct my tax code all over again.

I'm on monthly pay and it is a blessing in disguise - all my bills are current and have been ever since, I never have to worry about them. Even when they are whoppers, like an underestimated power bill (by a few hundy!) can just whack on the $$ and be done with it. But it is pretty heartbreaking to see the paltry amount left at the end, and realising that's IT for four weeks...

I've also noticed the 'day before payday' (where you are on your last few cents and just burning for that paypacket) has lengthened to almost a week. Oh well. One way I cope is to put aside a bit of money and unearth it later...so I can still afford that coffee in the morning!

I've been getting paid monthly for a few years, and initially it was, party week, 2 normal weeks, starve week.

These days I automate everything! I have 3 working accounts: Interest generating, no EFTPOS, no transfer fees account I get paid into (Holding) Low interest generating, low fees account for bills/rent/etc (Clearing) No fees spending account (Spending) I also have an on-call account for longer term saving, and a credit card.

The process is: Get paid monthly into Holding. On payday+1 bills/rent/payments money goes out to Clearing. Also, on payday+1 I enforce a 5% of salary savings payment. Finally, I clear out any money left in Holding from the last month into savings. Every tuesday, I pay myself a weekly stipend into the Spending account. This is guilt-free spending money for lunches, bits and bobs. Any leftovers are transferred back to Holding at the end of the week. I have a credit card that gets used for larger bills (train pass/petrol/etc) which is paid off in full monthly, come hell or high water.

I get paid monthly and find it works well. Pay day is the first working day of the month. In December we always get paid early, ie the pay due on the first working day of January is paid on 20 December. I last got paid on 20 December and won't get paid again until 1 February. Yes it requires some discipline but I'm well used to it and don't find it a problem.

In my early days of monthly pays, around 10 years ago, we were not that great at looking after money so would transfer the entire amount received on 20 December to a savings account and ignore it until 1 January. We've learned a thing or two about money management in the last 10 years and don't need to do that any longer.

My partner is a public servant and is paid fortnightly. We direct her salary to a separate savings account and use the entire amount to pay the mortgage, rates and house and contents insurances (all also paid fortnightly) so the account balance moves between quite a lot and almost nothing every fortnight. This plan will have our seven year old mortgage paid off in five months time.

One thing we have done to help keep our finances in line is to get our bank to change the date they issue statements. They tended to issue them all over the place which made it harder to reconcile things. Now we have them issued at the start of the calendar month (this was suggested by close friends who run their own business very successfully) which generally means the first line on the statement is my salary which of course makes the last line of the statement the amount left over for the month. My wife generally moves this amount to a savings account. Sometimes it's a nice additional amount to transfer and sometimes almost nothing.

I too am on monthly pay, love it for all your reasons, and have learnt to make it last, dont know that i would want to go back to fortnightly cos all auto payments as you noted are typically monthly and the juggle sucks

I am on fortnightly pays, and I have a spreadsheet to keep track of what needs to be paid from payday to payday, including an estimate of the monthly bills.

I have an amount credited to a bill payment account for the monthly APs which go out on a different schedule to my pays. Another amount automatically goes into my savings. My bank helpfully splits these payments when my pay gets credited.

Then I just pay the list of bills from my spreadsheet, take out an allowance for spending money in cash, and top up the savings account with whatever's left.

I don't think my approach would be any different if I got paid monthly.

Seems monthly pay is more common than I would have thought. I too am on monthly pay and agree with Greer and other commenters that once you get a system working it is actually easier with monthly pays. I have multiple bank accounts, and also put a fair amount of the bills through the credit card which gets paid off every month.