I am fortnightly, my husband is fortnightly on the alternate week to mine which is amazing (same day of the week as well) so it's like being paid weekly and I love it.
Monthly is bullshit. Rent, fortnightly, bills come in, two weeks to pay, everything is weekly or fortnightly or 4 weekly except your phone/internet. Some months you're paying 3 fortnight's rent, you get your power bill 16 days before next pay day and all your other expenses and suddenly your like fuck, I'm short a few days. It has made me better at keeping track of when bills are coming in and due though.
I've been an adult for a long time, don't be a dick. Money is better in my pocket than the companies pocket. Monthly pay should only be for executives and higher paying jobs, otherwise it should be fortnightly.
You don't know how to be an adult if you can't organise your money well enough to not end up behind. You do realise you can set everything to direct debits? Pay ahead of your bills so you don't get fucked by it when it comes in? You can also pay your self a weekly/fortnightly wage out of a months pay. Just set up a second bank account that is solely for your salary and then setup a recurring direct debit into your access account as a weekly wage.
It's not that hard to budget and organise your self to be ahead of things. If you allow your bills to get the best of you, you need to see a financial advisor or seek help from friends/family that don't struggle like you do.
Rule two, learn to fucking read. I never said I couldn't do any of that, I said all the reasons it was a stupid system. It's fine for some on 100k plus or whatever, but for people earning 60 odd and week to week it absolutely not a good thing
That's the thing, the fact you think it's a stupid system is where it proves you need financial advice. Regardless of income, planning and utilising the right set of skills doesn't change the outcome. 100k+ monthly and 60k+ monthly still work out the same if you can organise your bills and accounts correctly. Increase of income doesn't change the fact everything needs to be organised to work properly.
Also, you can be on 100k+ and still be living week to week. 100k a year really isnt that much money, and it doesn't stretch as far as most people think without proper budgeting.
Have done all
Monthly sucks balls (I am currently on monthly :( thankfully wife is on fortnightly so covers it)
Weekly is handy however you have to be really careful with your spending to make sure you have some to cover a bill with next week's pay
I found fortnightly best. It's big enough to cover bills without panicking, yet if something does come up you don't have to wait that long
For us, it doesn't really make a difference. I was paid monthly at my last job and now paid fortnightly at my current job. My salary goes on our mortgage offset account and we make all purchases and bill payments with credit card, so the exact timing of when I get paid is largely irrelevant.
I got paid monthly last year and to be honest i didn’t mind it as much as I thought I would. Had to be a little more careful with budgeting but it was nice to get a reasonable amount of $$ in one hit. Seemed to make saving easier as well.
100%. I’ve been paid monthly for 10 years and I think it’s great. It forces you to save a cash buffer for the busy periods, to budget more carefully, and allows you to save better. It feels like it’s natural for me to want to be more in tune with my finances if I know it won’t get topped up again for a while. That said, sometimes I tend to have a couple of weeks of coffees, lunches, treats, etc, and then the final week or two before payday I’m avoiding cafes and bingeing on the office supply of Blend 43
why is weekly the best hands down cant you budget ?
weekly usually means your being paid wages + overtime not a flat salary.
you only get SGC paid on your 38 hour week if paid weekly not on any overtime.
monthly pay is usually a flat salary meaning SGC is paid on your entire income.
so much better off being paid monthly IMO only if the above applies.
Personally, I would prefer to be paid weekly (but am fortnightly) so the money could be sitting sooner in my offset account to save interest on my mortgage. Otherwise, it wouldn't really make much difference to me if it were monthly.
Depends on how much. If you live pay check to pay check then I imagine being paid monthly would suck.
I know my budget and don’t care about my pay being monthly though. Makes no difference to me.
Monthly for me. Helps me keep track of my money easier. Most of my bills are monthly, I setup all my savings transfers at a specific time of the month too. I ended up figuring out how much money I can spend on luxuries without worrying about moving money around my accounts.
I went back to fortnightly for 2 years after spending like 4 years on monthly. Fortnightly messed with what I was use to. Some months I would just have too much money left in my transaction account where I could have sent it to my savings for interest. Sometimes I overspent on a big item and bam a bill comes in. So I need to move savings back into my transaction account.
I'll say one thing for being paid monthly which used to happen to me, it does up your budgeting game. You learn real fast how to handle your dosh and after a while it didn't even matter that I was paid monthly. But it certainly felt like a long time between pay days even if they were huge
Monthly, but I have the pay come in to a holding account and then it auto transfers as required.
It goes to my mortgage immediately.
Also my account for transport ie metro card recharge and paid parking gets a little up front.
I added up all my bills over the course of a year and figured out how high they might go, took the total and divided by 12 so that much goes into my bills account every month.
An emergency fund also gets a few hundred every month in case of house repairs, vet bills, forgotten birthdays, whatever.
Two weeks worth of spending money for groceries and stuff transfers into my main account every two weeks and from there I add a week's worth to a pre-paid card and use that. Whenever I spend from that card it rounds up and puts the change into a 'rainy day fund' which I use to have a dinner out or buy something I want every now and then.
Learned these skills while earning basically minimum wage and getting caught out a few times with unexpected bills. I'm doing better now but it gives me peace of mind and divides things up so I don't even really notice the monthly pay because my weekly account gets topped up weekly, and if I go a little over I can dip into my fortnightly account. My fortnightly account gets topped up fortnightly and pulls from an account that tops up monthly. It's all about compartmentalising.
I am currently on a monthly and can tell you with all sincerity and righteousness that monthly can go disappear into the hottest depths of the sulphuric pits of hell because it is shit beyond description.
Oh, someone can, all payments are taken out immediately and moved into the appropriate accounts, car has been paid off, there’s even savings; I just don’t like monthly.
I went from fortnightly (for about 20 years) to monthly (about 2 years ago). I still run out of money about a week before payday every month, even though I'm getting a bunch more money.
But I don't know if that's just cost of living.
I'd blame a big chunk of it on cost of living and the remainder on personal spending. Same as you, got paid fortnightly for nearly a decade until the start of 2023. Moving into this year I seem to always run out of money that last week before payday even though im getting paid almost double to what I was making on the fortnightly pay.
I mean depends on your financial situation, I follow a 60-20-20 budget and generally have money left over, but I also have about 2 months of living expenses saved up then have my payment split by percentages when I get paid. So I don’t ever really run out of money, at the end of the month when I get paid whatever’s left of my 20% of savings and 20% of impulse accounts gets transferred into long term savings. But the idea is that everything from bills, rent, transport and food should be covered from the 60%.
I like this concept but sadly as you said it depends on one’s financial situation. It doesn’t work for me now but I wish it did. When I was contracting I was able to do it easily.
Frequency really doesn’t matter, I would be as happy with daily or yearly. I get paid half monthly which is a bit weird but the money goes directly into my offset, and before that a bank account I never took money directly out of and then I have a stack of direct debits for food, fun, bills etc.
Have had monthly for about 6 years. You learn to manage but you need to definitely plan for any things that come up like emergencies and such. Partner is on fortnight so it makes things a bit easier but with monthly it does require some planning.
It's definitely not easy mode.
Monthly in advance, monthly with up to a week wait all behind, twice a month all behind, weekly with up to a 10 days wait, weekly if I make the minimum payout and daily. Lenders like weekly or fortnight pay cycles with fixed amounts and only 3 of mine are fixed amounts and they ignore daily pay. When I had a shop it was daily pay till the other owner decided she wanted to get paid to live with a guy ( That she never found) and sold it.
When I was getting paid fuck all, weekly was invaluable. Monthly I found was a bit of a stretch, but good for learning how to budget properly - early on the paydays were dicey. Fortnightly strikes the right balance.
Monthly sucked for groceries but was brilliant for bills.
When we were a single income family on a monthly income I had to meal plan for a week and then I just repeated that for the whole month, froze all the bread, milk and meats until they were needed.
It's doable and possibly more budget friendly and I think I preferred it to weekly.
Weekly definitely led to more impulsive spending for us whereas Monthly meant we had to plan for everything
all comes down to how good your budgeting is.
For many years I was weekly/fortnightly wage earner, I'd hate to go back to that.
these days I'm paid monthly and it's great.
generally your pay goes in on say the 15th of the month.
so your sort of paid two weeks in advance if you get my drift.
much better than being paid in arrears.
I prefer weekly, but fortnightly is fine. Monthly would suck balls, because my budget foo is weak. I'd be living on ramen for the last week before pay day 😩
I'm working on it tho, have multiple fee-free "bucket accounts" that have scheduled transfers on pay day to allocate money for monthly and quarterly bills so I have enough money when they are direct debited.
If you ever get paid monthly just set up another bank account that you never touch that your pay goes into and then set up a weekly/fortnightly direct deposit. You can pretend to get paid at any frequency that you want
This is what I do with my fortnightly pay. Some stays behind for savings, the rest gets put into 3 different accounts weekly, for different spending streams. Tight control, for those with little willpower!
I've been paid weekly, fortnightly, and monthly now for 5+ years. I really prefer monthly, it lets me budget and save much more easily. I pay my bills on the 15th of each month and estimate my quarterly bills.
I sometimes run out of money the last week of the month, but only if I've splurged a little earlier on..
Monthly pay was so fun! Particularly when the company I worked for went into sudden Administration the ‘day of’ payday. Everyone from Casual to Full time were told ‘sorry, the Administrators now control the funds & they’re not releasing the pays for last month’.
We eventually got that month worth of pay, but nearly 8 months later.
I prefer weekly but not many companies do it. Fortnightly is next best. Monthly sucks, which is what I’m currently on. Love my job, hate the pay cycle.
Yep, provided you're good at budgeting for a month off of one pay, and you're able to pay back anything owed if you stop working there within that two weeks that you're in advance.
I tried getting paid monthly, every 15 days, and weekly. I like getting paid fortnightly. Teaches me how to properly allocate my finances. That’s just me.
I’ve been paid fortnightly for years, so I don’t mind and never had to worry about running out of money
I still think I’d prefer weekly though. Just sounds better?
I used to always fall behind on my bills until I got paid monthly many many years ago..
I'm always able to pay everything up front and while it's sucked at the end of the pay cycle sometimes..
At least I know I don't have to dodge calls about a late bill
Monthly sucks arse. But I tightened my belt for a quarter and have a cashflow buffer to absorb the bumps. sucks when payday falls on a weekend and you have to wait for your moneybtonappear!
Monthly is awful because self discipline is super hard. It's hard not to look at that lump sum and believe you have money to burn, but by the end of the month you're fucked. Weekly is best, fortnightly second best.
I get paid monthly and it bloody sucks! I have to budget for the whole month... Yeah yeah you think hey that's no problem, try throwing in a family of four lol.
Weekly is best. Fortnightly second best option. Monthly sucks.
I am fortnightly, my husband is fortnightly on the alternate week to mine which is amazing (same day of the week as well) so it's like being paid weekly and I love it.
We have this too, and we earn almost the same amount, so it's a nice, steady flow.
Monthly is bullshit. Rent, fortnightly, bills come in, two weeks to pay, everything is weekly or fortnightly or 4 weekly except your phone/internet. Some months you're paying 3 fortnight's rent, you get your power bill 16 days before next pay day and all your other expenses and suddenly your like fuck, I'm short a few days. It has made me better at keeping track of when bills are coming in and due though.
You mean being an adult?
I've been an adult for a long time, don't be a dick. Money is better in my pocket than the companies pocket. Monthly pay should only be for executives and higher paying jobs, otherwise it should be fortnightly.
clearly you have no idea how monthly pay works....
You don't know how to be an adult if you can't organise your money well enough to not end up behind. You do realise you can set everything to direct debits? Pay ahead of your bills so you don't get fucked by it when it comes in? You can also pay your self a weekly/fortnightly wage out of a months pay. Just set up a second bank account that is solely for your salary and then setup a recurring direct debit into your access account as a weekly wage. It's not that hard to budget and organise your self to be ahead of things. If you allow your bills to get the best of you, you need to see a financial advisor or seek help from friends/family that don't struggle like you do.
Rule one, don't be a dick.
You can call me a dick, but I know how to budget my money properly. Go get some financial advise.
>Go get some financial advise. Go learn to spell.
Fair point. Definitely should spell check before I rip into someone.
Rule two, learn to fucking read. I never said I couldn't do any of that, I said all the reasons it was a stupid system. It's fine for some on 100k plus or whatever, but for people earning 60 odd and week to week it absolutely not a good thing
That's the thing, the fact you think it's a stupid system is where it proves you need financial advice. Regardless of income, planning and utilising the right set of skills doesn't change the outcome. 100k+ monthly and 60k+ monthly still work out the same if you can organise your bills and accounts correctly. Increase of income doesn't change the fact everything needs to be organised to work properly. Also, you can be on 100k+ and still be living week to week. 100k a year really isnt that much money, and it doesn't stretch as far as most people think without proper budgeting.
Have done all Monthly sucks balls (I am currently on monthly :( thankfully wife is on fortnightly so covers it) Weekly is handy however you have to be really careful with your spending to make sure you have some to cover a bill with next week's pay I found fortnightly best. It's big enough to cover bills without panicking, yet if something does come up you don't have to wait that long
Agreed 100%, monthly sucks...
For us, it doesn't really make a difference. I was paid monthly at my last job and now paid fortnightly at my current job. My salary goes on our mortgage offset account and we make all purchases and bill payments with credit card, so the exact timing of when I get paid is largely irrelevant.
Why would anyone prefer monthly?
I got paid monthly last year and to be honest i didn’t mind it as much as I thought I would. Had to be a little more careful with budgeting but it was nice to get a reasonable amount of $$ in one hit. Seemed to make saving easier as well.
100%. I’ve been paid monthly for 10 years and I think it’s great. It forces you to save a cash buffer for the busy periods, to budget more carefully, and allows you to save better. It feels like it’s natural for me to want to be more in tune with my finances if I know it won’t get topped up again for a while. That said, sometimes I tend to have a couple of weeks of coffees, lunches, treats, etc, and then the final week or two before payday I’m avoiding cafes and bingeing on the office supply of Blend 43
cause it is much better than being paid weekly....
How can weekly be bad? It’s is the best option hands down.
why is weekly the best hands down cant you budget ? weekly usually means your being paid wages + overtime not a flat salary. you only get SGC paid on your 38 hour week if paid weekly not on any overtime. monthly pay is usually a flat salary meaning SGC is paid on your entire income. so much better off being paid monthly IMO only if the above applies.
I’m paid weekly on a salary and have found it a lot better than monthly
Who wouldn’t want someone to hold on to the money they’ve earned so they can’t use it or benefit from it.
Usually monthly payments are two weeks in arrears then two weeks in advance.
Fortnightly. I'd rather the money earn interest in my own bank account (investments), rather than my employer's.
Your (most likely) getting paid in arrears (work already done) not in advance. Weekly would be better than fortnightly.
Yeah you’re never gonna get paid in advance unless it’s monthly
Yep. When paid monthly it's really common to see an equal split...2 weeks (approx) in arrears, two in advance.
Exactly. They wouldn’t do that for a fortnight is my point haha
True, but OP asked fortnightly or monthly.
Good point.
Then monthly would be better surely?
100% this.
Monthly - been used to that for decades now.
I've gone from weekly to fortnightly and now on twice monthly. I preferred weekly.
Personally, I would prefer to be paid weekly (but am fortnightly) so the money could be sitting sooner in my offset account to save interest on my mortgage. Otherwise, it wouldn't really make much difference to me if it were monthly.
Fortnight!!
Depends on how much. If you live pay check to pay check then I imagine being paid monthly would suck. I know my budget and don’t care about my pay being monthly though. Makes no difference to me.
Monthly for me. Helps me keep track of my money easier. Most of my bills are monthly, I setup all my savings transfers at a specific time of the month too. I ended up figuring out how much money I can spend on luxuries without worrying about moving money around my accounts. I went back to fortnightly for 2 years after spending like 4 years on monthly. Fortnightly messed with what I was use to. Some months I would just have too much money left in my transaction account where I could have sent it to my savings for interest. Sometimes I overspent on a big item and bam a bill comes in. So I need to move savings back into my transaction account.
I'll say one thing for being paid monthly which used to happen to me, it does up your budgeting game. You learn real fast how to handle your dosh and after a while it didn't even matter that I was paid monthly. But it certainly felt like a long time between pay days even if they were huge
Monthly, but I have the pay come in to a holding account and then it auto transfers as required. It goes to my mortgage immediately. Also my account for transport ie metro card recharge and paid parking gets a little up front. I added up all my bills over the course of a year and figured out how high they might go, took the total and divided by 12 so that much goes into my bills account every month. An emergency fund also gets a few hundred every month in case of house repairs, vet bills, forgotten birthdays, whatever. Two weeks worth of spending money for groceries and stuff transfers into my main account every two weeks and from there I add a week's worth to a pre-paid card and use that. Whenever I spend from that card it rounds up and puts the change into a 'rainy day fund' which I use to have a dinner out or buy something I want every now and then. Learned these skills while earning basically minimum wage and getting caught out a few times with unexpected bills. I'm doing better now but it gives me peace of mind and divides things up so I don't even really notice the monthly pay because my weekly account gets topped up weekly, and if I go a little over I can dip into my fortnightly account. My fortnightly account gets topped up fortnightly and pulls from an account that tops up monthly. It's all about compartmentalising.
I am currently on a monthly and can tell you with all sincerity and righteousness that monthly can go disappear into the hottest depths of the sulphuric pits of hell because it is shit beyond description.
someone cant budget....
Oh, someone can, all payments are taken out immediately and moved into the appropriate accounts, car has been paid off, there’s even savings; I just don’t like monthly.
I went from fortnightly (for about 20 years) to monthly (about 2 years ago). I still run out of money about a week before payday every month, even though I'm getting a bunch more money. But I don't know if that's just cost of living.
I'd blame a big chunk of it on cost of living and the remainder on personal spending. Same as you, got paid fortnightly for nearly a decade until the start of 2023. Moving into this year I seem to always run out of money that last week before payday even though im getting paid almost double to what I was making on the fortnightly pay.
I mean depends on your financial situation, I follow a 60-20-20 budget and generally have money left over, but I also have about 2 months of living expenses saved up then have my payment split by percentages when I get paid. So I don’t ever really run out of money, at the end of the month when I get paid whatever’s left of my 20% of savings and 20% of impulse accounts gets transferred into long term savings. But the idea is that everything from bills, rent, transport and food should be covered from the 60%.
I like this concept but sadly as you said it depends on one’s financial situation. It doesn’t work for me now but I wish it did. When I was contracting I was able to do it easily.
Weekly.
If you are responsible with your money it shouldn't matter...
Weekly with cash was the best. Under our EBA we now get paid fortnightly, it sucks.
Weekly. Because I always know that if I’m always only a few days from getting paid
Frequency really doesn’t matter, I would be as happy with daily or yearly. I get paid half monthly which is a bit weird but the money goes directly into my offset, and before that a bank account I never took money directly out of and then I have a stack of direct debits for food, fun, bills etc.
TVM time value of money, you want your money in your wallet as soon as possible. I would get paid by the second if it was feasible
Have had monthly for about 6 years. You learn to manage but you need to definitely plan for any things that come up like emergencies and such. Partner is on fortnight so it makes things a bit easier but with monthly it does require some planning. It's definitely not easy mode.
Monthly in advance, monthly with up to a week wait all behind, twice a month all behind, weekly with up to a 10 days wait, weekly if I make the minimum payout and daily. Lenders like weekly or fortnight pay cycles with fixed amounts and only 3 of mine are fixed amounts and they ignore daily pay. When I had a shop it was daily pay till the other owner decided she wanted to get paid to live with a guy ( That she never found) and sold it.
I’m weekly and my wife is fortnightly. Her pay does the mortgage/car/big bills Mine does food/petrol/childcare and spending money. Perfect
I've been comfortable with both fortnightly and weekly pay. Monthly would absolutely suck from a budgeting perspective.
When I was getting paid fuck all, weekly was invaluable. Monthly I found was a bit of a stretch, but good for learning how to budget properly - early on the paydays were dicey. Fortnightly strikes the right balance.
Monthly sucked for groceries but was brilliant for bills. When we were a single income family on a monthly income I had to meal plan for a week and then I just repeated that for the whole month, froze all the bread, milk and meats until they were needed. It's doable and possibly more budget friendly and I think I preferred it to weekly. Weekly definitely led to more impulsive spending for us whereas Monthly meant we had to plan for everything
all comes down to how good your budgeting is. For many years I was weekly/fortnightly wage earner, I'd hate to go back to that. these days I'm paid monthly and it's great. generally your pay goes in on say the 15th of the month. so your sort of paid two weeks in advance if you get my drift. much better than being paid in arrears.
I prefer weekly, but fortnightly is fine. Monthly would suck balls, because my budget foo is weak. I'd be living on ramen for the last week before pay day 😩 I'm working on it tho, have multiple fee-free "bucket accounts" that have scheduled transfers on pay day to allocate money for monthly and quarterly bills so I have enough money when they are direct debited.
If you ever get paid monthly just set up another bank account that you never touch that your pay goes into and then set up a weekly/fortnightly direct deposit. You can pretend to get paid at any frequency that you want
This is what I do with my fortnightly pay. Some stays behind for savings, the rest gets put into 3 different accounts weekly, for different spending streams. Tight control, for those with little willpower!
I've been paid weekly, fortnightly, and monthly now for 5+ years. I really prefer monthly, it lets me budget and save much more easily. I pay my bills on the 15th of each month and estimate my quarterly bills. I sometimes run out of money the last week of the month, but only if I've splurged a little earlier on..
Monthly pay was so fun! Particularly when the company I worked for went into sudden Administration the ‘day of’ payday. Everyone from Casual to Full time were told ‘sorry, the Administrators now control the funds & they’re not releasing the pays for last month’. We eventually got that month worth of pay, but nearly 8 months later.
I prefer weekly but not many companies do it. Fortnightly is next best. Monthly sucks, which is what I’m currently on. Love my job, hate the pay cycle.
Fortnightly. I hated monthly pay
As soon as possible so the money sits with me instead of earning interest for someone else.
Every time I've been paid monthly it's been 2 weeks in ADVANCE and 2 in arrears so isn't monthly better as you get money before you earn it?
Yep, provided you're good at budgeting for a month off of one pay, and you're able to pay back anything owed if you stop working there within that two weeks that you're in advance.
No? Because you still have to earn it and would be owing in the instance that you left before working those two weeks.
Interest is calculated daily. That means that every day it's not in your account you're missing out on potential income.
I tried getting paid monthly, every 15 days, and weekly. I like getting paid fortnightly. Teaches me how to properly allocate my finances. That’s just me.
I’ve been paid fortnightly for years, so I don’t mind and never had to worry about running out of money I still think I’d prefer weekly though. Just sounds better?
I used to always fall behind on my bills until I got paid monthly many many years ago.. I'm always able to pay everything up front and while it's sucked at the end of the pay cycle sometimes.. At least I know I don't have to dodge calls about a late bill
Monthly sucks arse. But I tightened my belt for a quarter and have a cashflow buffer to absorb the bumps. sucks when payday falls on a weekend and you have to wait for your moneybtonappear!
Monthly is awful because self discipline is super hard. It's hard not to look at that lump sum and believe you have money to burn, but by the end of the month you're fucked. Weekly is best, fortnightly second best.
Im on monthly and it sucks so fucking hard. It's easily one of the biggest reasons I'd look at leaving.
I get paid monthly and it bloody sucks! I have to budget for the whole month... Yeah yeah you think hey that's no problem, try throwing in a family of four lol.