This all sounds great until you realize that you need time to run up to this, or a modicum of savings in order to make it happen.
Your numbers are optimistic at best. My bills vary and they’re more than 70% of my income (roughly).
It’s more efficient to deposit my money into a bill payment account, then take out what I can spend from that.
Guess what I already do?
Guess how much “spend” I have, per week, that needs to cover all of my gas, food, and everything else? I’m not even saving a dollar, and my available money per week is around $200.
That seems great until you realize that I’m Canadian and it’s Canadian dollars, and $200 CAD is around $150 USD.
I’m employed, full time, in a specialized field, and I can spend $100 USD a week on food because I need the extra $50 for incidentals and gas.
I don’t need a budget. I have a budget. I need a raise.
Ask for a raise. One thing that might help you stretch your money a bit further is utilizing a food pantry or food bank. Not sure if they are as common in Canada.
I was only off by $30 in my scenario compared to your situation. Having multiple accounts and using direct deposit to help divide your budget upfront just makes it easier.
I’m lucky that money isn’t a major concern for me at this point in my life, but earlier in my career when my ex-gf had a significant amount of credit card debt doing our budget this way really helped and got her to be debt free.
I’m not sure why you think my scenario requires savings to start, If you’re already paying all your bills. This is just a tool to help manage your budget.
I need savings because all my bills land in the same week-and-a-half timespan.
So there needs to be all of the money in the account before that happens.
I know, it’ll balance itself out in the long term, but the weeks I don’t have bills to pay are usually the weeks that I need to refill the pantry, and end up spending more than I have allocated for that week so that I can eat.
I need to accumulate the base amount to pay all my bills when they come due, before I can really get started.
I know it seems really simple, once all my bills are done for the month, start then! Except there’s probably incidentals, like the food that I mentioned, that need to be purchased, that I just can’t afford on the $100 available for me that week. So I take what’s needed, and then I’m behind again. The cycle continues.
I had a very good system for this when I was getting paid twice a month. I took the ~400 or 450 or whatever (again CAD) from each paycheck, and I split my bills so that, by cost, they were roughly split between before-the-15th and after-the-15th pay periods. I’d get paid, take my share, let the bank do the rest, and when I get a notification for a bill I need to pay by hand, from my calendar app, I go and pay it in full.
Then I ended up with weekly pay and suddenly, I’m paying 130%+ of a weeks income to pay my bills on the same week.
It fucked me up man. I’m still pretty wrecked by it and it’s been like this for more than a year.
You should def hit up a food pantry, saving some money on food for a bit will help you rebalance your finances. Not sure if you don’t make much or live in a really high cost of living area but another thing to look into is the Canadian version of food stamps if they have it. There’s no shame in getting help!
This all sounds great until you realize that you need time to run up to this, or a modicum of savings in order to make it happen.
Your numbers are optimistic at best. My bills vary and they’re more than 70% of my income (roughly).
It’s more efficient to deposit my money into a bill payment account, then take out what I can spend from that.
Guess what I already do?
Guess how much “spend” I have, per week, that needs to cover all of my gas, food, and everything else? I’m not even saving a dollar, and my available money per week is around $200.
That seems great until you realize that I’m Canadian and it’s Canadian dollars, and $200 CAD is around $150 USD.
I’m employed, full time, in a specialized field, and I can spend $100 USD a week on food because I need the extra $50 for incidentals and gas.
I don’t need a budget. I have a budget. I need a raise.
Ask for a raise. One thing that might help you stretch your money a bit further is utilizing a food pantry or food bank. Not sure if they are as common in Canada.
I was only off by $30 in my scenario compared to your situation. Having multiple accounts and using direct deposit to help divide your budget upfront just makes it easier.
I’m lucky that money isn’t a major concern for me at this point in my life, but earlier in my career when my ex-gf had a significant amount of credit card debt doing our budget this way really helped and got her to be debt free.
I’m not sure why you think my scenario requires savings to start, If you’re already paying all your bills. This is just a tool to help manage your budget.
I need savings because all my bills land in the same week-and-a-half timespan.
So there needs to be all of the money in the account before that happens.
I know, it’ll balance itself out in the long term, but the weeks I don’t have bills to pay are usually the weeks that I need to refill the pantry, and end up spending more than I have allocated for that week so that I can eat.
I need to accumulate the base amount to pay all my bills when they come due, before I can really get started.
I know it seems really simple, once all my bills are done for the month, start then! Except there’s probably incidentals, like the food that I mentioned, that need to be purchased, that I just can’t afford on the $100 available for me that week. So I take what’s needed, and then I’m behind again. The cycle continues.
I had a very good system for this when I was getting paid twice a month. I took the ~400 or 450 or whatever (again CAD) from each paycheck, and I split my bills so that, by cost, they were roughly split between before-the-15th and after-the-15th pay periods. I’d get paid, take my share, let the bank do the rest, and when I get a notification for a bill I need to pay by hand, from my calendar app, I go and pay it in full.
Then I ended up with weekly pay and suddenly, I’m paying 130%+ of a weeks income to pay my bills on the same week.
It fucked me up man. I’m still pretty wrecked by it and it’s been like this for more than a year.
You should def hit up a food pantry, saving some money on food for a bit will help you rebalance your finances. Not sure if you don’t make much or live in a really high cost of living area but another thing to look into is the Canadian version of food stamps if they have it. There’s no shame in getting help!