The 4 employers in my 25 years in the workforce here in US all paid bi-weekly. Individuals with little savings or living paycheck to paycheck would prefer to be paid weekly. Faster access to funds gives individuals more flexibility. We already have a market for payday loans. I can only only imagine how many more loan companies would pop up if Americans were paid monthly.

 

I think that this might bolster the TS's position, actually. It sounds like what you are saying is that getting paid weekly makes it easier to live hand-to-mouth. If you find yourself needing money so quickly that getting paid weekly makes the difference, then you are NOT budgeting and planning properly.

And so stressful!

 

And so stressful!

You said it!

The amount of daily stress that simply disappears when you know you are not living hand to mouth is enormous. Even if you are spending everything you make (which is not good in the long run, of course), if you are spending what you made three months ago and not three weeks ago, you have enormous peace of mind. A bill comes in and you just pay it. You don't have to calculate how many days the payment will take to post and whether or not the due date falls on a weekend or whether you need to hold off putting gas in the car, you just pay the damn bill and move on.

 

This might be interesting to folks:

https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/how-frequently-do-private-businesses-pay-workers.htm

While looking this up, I came across this:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...kers-get-paid-daily-instead-weekly/781706001/

 

You said it!

The amount of daily stress that simply disappears when you know you are not living hand to mouth is enormous. Even if you are spending everything you make (which is not good in the long run, of course), if you are spending what you made three months ago and not three weeks ago, you have enormous peace of mind. A bill comes in and you just pay it. You don't have to calculate how many days the payment will take to post and whether or not the due date falls on a weekend or whether you need to hold off putting gas in the car, you just pay the damn bill and move on.

So true ... I normally get 4 or 5 paychecks a year ... and what I do is I always pay all of my yearly rent, insurance and other fixed costs of next year in one big sweep when I earn enough money... it is then that I can relax and plan for the future.

 

@WBahn
I dont live hand to mouth. I just don't like the idea of being paid in large sums once a month and the rewards become harder to see as you go into the month. Plus, there are always "surprise" payments that can catch anyone off guard! Car broke down? Need an emergency tooth repair? Weekly payments can be helpful like this.

 

So true ... I normally get 4 or 5 paychecks a year ... and what I do is I always pay all of my yearly rent, insurance and other fixed costs of next year in one big sweep when I earn enough money... it is then that I can relax and plan for the future.

I was the same way. I used to pay all of my known bills, particularly utilities, a full year ahead and then got to the point where I paid a year's worth toward it while there was still about a six month credit. That meant that even if everything came crashing down around my feet at the worst possible time, I would still have the essentials covered for another six months.

Now, when savings accounts got to paying over 4% I stopped that and put the money instead into savings and paid each bill just before the due date. That required more effort and diligence on my part, but that was fine since it was paying a nice little dividend. Not long after that it started becoming possible to setup automatic payments and so I did that for everything I could and went back to just working and having fun and not worrying about money (and, admittedly, not even opening my bank statements or credit card statements -- which was not too bright since it meant that I wasn't in a position to catch any mistakes or fraud, which fortunately never happened that I am aware of).

The thing that was truly unexpected was that once I got the house paid off and got all the other regular bills paid ahead, I thought I was living "fast and free" but yet the money just kept piling up until I started thinking about buying the house we're in now and so I looked and my checking account had over $70k in it. It turned out that while I was living a significantly more "lavish" lifestyle than while I was pinching every penny, that just a few hundred dollars a month spent on "fun" was more than enough to satisfy me.

I'm hoping to soon get back to something like that. The new house is now down to just $12,000 and, after that, there will only be an ill-advised 401(k) loan to clear out. With interest rates where they are now, I plan to get the main bills once again paid ahead by at least a year, which actually doesn't take that much.

 

@WBahn
I dont live hand to mouth. I just don't like the idea of being paid in large sums once a month and the rewards become harder to see as you go into the month. Plus, there are always "surprise" payments that can catch anyone off guard! Car broke down? Need an emergency tooth repair? Weekly payments can be helpful like this.

That's just what I'm talking about. If an unexpected auto repair or dentist visit means that you are in a bind and need that next paycheck this week instead of at the end of the month, then you are pretty much living hand-to-mouth. You need to have an emergency fund in place that is ONLY used for emergencies -- unexpected things that must be paid for now and that can't be put off until you can cash flow it out of current and upcoming income. The usual recommendations are three to six months of normal expenses. If you don't have that sitting in an account that you never touch except for those emergencies, then I'd recommend (and that's all it is, a recommendation that you can take or leave) cutting back your lifestyle to the bone for as long as it takes to get that three months of expenses -- no dining out, no movies, no toys -- and then relax a bit but keep putting some money in there every single paycheck until you at least get to the six months (and I like a full year).

A couple years ago my truck lost an oil line and seized the engine in the middle of a blizzard. The new engine cost $4600. Without having the emergency fund in place, it would have been financially devastating since that truck was at that time my only available means of transportation to get to/from work (given the weather) and that repair bill was more than an entire month's take home pay. But because of that emergency fund, it was just a painful annoyance that we could absorb and move on.

 

The new engine cost $4600.

Ouch! ... what type of truck do you drive?

 

Ouch! ... what type of truck do you drive?

That one is a '93 GMC Yukon with a 350 cubic inch engine. I opted to get a quality rebuilt engine (100,000 mile warranty from a company that's been around for nearly 80 years) instead of a used engine because I haven't had much good experience with the quality of used engines in the past. Since the truck just recently hit 120,000 original miles, it was worth putting the money into it. More to the point, I couldn't see that I could take that $4,600 and buy another vehicle that would have been in as good a shape and served the same purpose that this one does on the mountain, particularly on such short notice. Whether I was correct in that assessment is another matter.

 

A couple years ago my truck lost an oil line and seized the engine in the middle of a blizzard. The new engine cost $4600.

The transmission in my Ford Explorer started acting up and the dealer wanted over $4,000 to repair it. The vehicle wasn't worth sinking that much in to it, so I bought a new (to me) vehicle. The salesperson kept trying to talk me into financing instead of paying cash. Wish we hadn't told him up front that we were paying cash; might have gotten a better deal if they thought they were going to make money on financing...

All of my vehicle purchases for the past 20 years have been cash.

 

I stopped doing things like that, a friend of mine and I both owned businesses near each other. We both obtained 3 year gym memberships, I paid mine in cash while he paid his each month. I said to him one day, why do you do that when you have the cash to pay it off, seemed like a hassle to me, he said well you never know what may happen in the future.

He must have had a Crystal ball because 6 months later they went bankrupt, he said told you so. $70,000 in savings would be gold to me, because I can make more money on my own investments like flipping property or seasonal things like Boats, Snowmobiles, Motorcycles, etc. People get into financial trouble are willing to take cash at a reduced cost.

kv

 

The transmission in my Ford Explorer started acting up and the dealer wanted over $4,000 to repair it. The vehicle wasn't worth sinking that much in to it, so I bought a new (to me) vehicle. The salesperson kept trying to talk me into financing instead of paying cash. Wish we hadn't told him up front that we were paying cash...

I was shocked when I learned how much it costs to rebuild/replace a tranny on "modern" cars. A coworker had a car that the tranny would have been over $3,000 and that was about 15 years ago. He junked the car. My wife's Honda CRV lost the tranny and it would have been $4k -- we junked the car.

My old '88 Ford F-250 is still about $800 to replace the C-6 in it and I think the Yukon is somewhere in the $1,500 range. The Yukon tranny still seems like it's in good shape, but the Ford's tranny is getting on shaky ground, which is not too surprising since it gets use primarily as a plow truck on the mountain, which just beats the hell out of trannies. The fact that I don't baby any of my vehicles doesn't help matters, either.

 

I stopped doing things like that, a friend of mine and I both owned businesses near each other. We both obtained 3 year gym memberships, I paid mine in cash while he paid his each month. I said to him one day, why do you do that when you have the cash to pay it off, seemed like a hassle to me, he said well you never know what may happen in the future.

He must have had a Crystal ball because 6 months later they went bankrupt, he said told you so. $70,000 in savings would be gold to me, because I can make more money on my own investments like flipping property or seasonal things like Boats, Snowmobiles, Motorcycles, etc. People get into financial trouble are willing to take cash at a reduced cost.

kv

Crystal ball or self-fulfilling prophecy?

 

Crystal ball or self-fulfilling prophecy?

I try to follow much of what he says, he's from Mexico lost the use of his right arm and used the insurance money to buy into some guy that owned a stained glass shop $15,000, that guy ended up in the loony bin so, it defaulted to him, then he purchased the building he was in and also purchased another property and sold the business and property for 5 million. He now owns a boot factory in Mexico, beveled glass import business, stained glass shop in another town as to abide by the contract of the sale of the other stained glass shop 3 hrs away.

In St,George Utah puts him close to his other companies, 5 bedroom swimming pool tennis court. Paid for, this guy seems to just have knack for making money. As a child he grew up hustling "Johns" for prostitutes in Mexico, I asked him one time, why didn't you fall into the smuggling business, he said why would I when I can make more money legally in this country.

I will say he got a good education from his clients who are Millionaires, it's all about timing and street smarts. He never graduated from any school but the school of hard knocks.

kv

 

I was shocked when I learned how much it costs to rebuild/replace a tranny on "modern" cars.

I should clarify that the quote was for a rebuilt transmission. The dealership wasn't going to repair or rebuild; just swap.

 

I should clarify that the quote was for a rebuilt transmission. The dealership wasn't going to repair or rebuild; just swap.

That's what I was figuring. Most shops are only going to swap out the failed tranny for a rebuilt one. Generally only an actual transmission place will actually overhaul the present transmission, and even that's iffy in many cases on the newer ones.

 

I've been paid daily, weekly, every fortnight, monthly and after a whole summer. Differs from a job to job but getting paid monthly has pretty much become the norm here in any profession.

Daily- Planting and harvesting vegetables. Selling newspapers and my own drawings when I was 5 ( a heckin' entrepreneur I was ) But I must admit that trying to counterfeit money was my first though and use of paper at that age.

Weekly and bi-weekly- Construction.

Monthly- Later on construction, retail and service based jobs.

After a whole summer- Farming and everything farming related.

My 2 cents are that for most people who pay their bills once a month, a monthly pay makes most sense until you're in a situation where you have so much in the bank that payday is no different from any other day.

 

28 years at Carrier Air Conditioning got paid weekly. Plant closed and I went to teaching, got paid on the 15th of each month, that took a little getting used to. And that monthly pay was direct deposit only, if we had a student do any after hours class work for us they had to have a checking account before they could do any work.

 

Car broke down? Need an emergency tooth repair? Weekly payments can be helpful like this.

Credit cards are useful IF you make a habit of paying them off every month. Then work with the bank to ensure your CC is due after you receive your monthly pay. I get paid monthly, well actually bi-monthly between retirement and social security. Manage the cash flow the best you can.