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ferenOne of the quirks about my employer is that they pay on a biweekly schedule, meaning that I receive 26 pay checks per year. Since we've selected Friday as our pay day I essentially receive my pay check "every other" Friday. This is better than some companies that pay on a monthly basis but it is not nearly as convenient as other companies I've worked for that pay on a weekly basis. The biweekly payroll system is most annoying because it tends to play havoc with scheduling my fiscal obligations; for example most of my credit cards are due on the 12th, my storage unit's rent is due on the 10th, my cellular bill is due on the 18th and my insurance premium is withdrawn on the 27th. My share of rent and utilities is due to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roho anytime between the 2nd and the 12th (it fluctuates depending on how busy he and I are) so I have a small bit of reprieve in that aspect... but not much. Ultimately, because of the widely dispersed nature of my bills and the total inflexibility of my pay schedule, my account balances tend to see periods of "feast" and periods of "famine." One week I will have an incredibly high available balance in my checking account (over $2,000) and then three days later I can have an incredibly low balance (say around $30) because an electronic payment cleared for one of my expenses.
In the last few months I have done my best to negate this "yo-yo effect" by taking two courses of action. First, to prevent my account from being totally devastated and left barren for a week or more I have stopped making monumental payments in excess of $500 towards outstanding balances such as my Citibank card. Yes, this leaves me accruing interest but I'm trying to get things normalized to the point that no matter what I will always have a balance of $1,500 or greater in my checking account (believe me when I say that's harder to achieve than it sounds when you were trained to pay down outstanding debts as fast as possible). The second step I've taken is to switch to what is referred to as "direct deposit" for our payroll. For those of you not familiar with it, direct deposit is a system that electronically credits my checking account at 12:30 AM on pay day. This is particularly useful because it eliminates the "lag" that can be associated with depositing a paper check (I hate having to wait for checks to clear because you never know if it will be one day or four days before the money is available) and it also makes life easier for me by eliminating a biweekly side-trip to the bank. Since my credit union keeps standard bank hours it is difficult to get in to the lobby before they lock the doors and for some reason I don't feel comfortable depositing my pay into an ATM. That preference for face-to-face human contact and records-keeping usually means a Saturday deposit, and that in turn means an even longer delay before the check clears. So having direct deposit is a blessing because my paycheck is deposited into my account for me before I even receive the paper stub that acts as a "receipt."
I checked my balance this morning as usual and was surprised to see a higher balance than I expected. When I looked at the transaction details for my account I found that my employer had made not one but two deposits. It took a minute for me to figure out but eventually I realized that what I was seeing was my regular paycheck plus my back-pay check from the 2001-2002 performance appraisal. Usually those are given out only as actual paper checks... but I guess our payroll department was feeling lazy this week.
To paraphrase Homer Simpson, Mmmmmmmm, $1,565.48 of unexpected money. Now I have to decide what to do with it...
roho anytime between the 2nd and the 12th (it fluctuates depending on how busy he and I are) so I have a small bit of reprieve in that aspect... but not much. Ultimately, because of the widely dispersed nature of my bills and the total inflexibility of my pay schedule, my account balances tend to see periods of "feast" and periods of "famine." One week I will have an incredibly high available balance in my checking account (over $2,000) and then three days later I can have an incredibly low balance (say around $30) because an electronic payment cleared for one of my expenses. In the last few months I have done my best to negate this "yo-yo effect" by taking two courses of action. First, to prevent my account from being totally devastated and left barren for a week or more I have stopped making monumental payments in excess of $500 towards outstanding balances such as my Citibank card. Yes, this leaves me accruing interest but I'm trying to get things normalized to the point that no matter what I will always have a balance of $1,500 or greater in my checking account (believe me when I say that's harder to achieve than it sounds when you were trained to pay down outstanding debts as fast as possible). The second step I've taken is to switch to what is referred to as "direct deposit" for our payroll. For those of you not familiar with it, direct deposit is a system that electronically credits my checking account at 12:30 AM on pay day. This is particularly useful because it eliminates the "lag" that can be associated with depositing a paper check (I hate having to wait for checks to clear because you never know if it will be one day or four days before the money is available) and it also makes life easier for me by eliminating a biweekly side-trip to the bank. Since my credit union keeps standard bank hours it is difficult to get in to the lobby before they lock the doors and for some reason I don't feel comfortable depositing my pay into an ATM. That preference for face-to-face human contact and records-keeping usually means a Saturday deposit, and that in turn means an even longer delay before the check clears. So having direct deposit is a blessing because my paycheck is deposited into my account for me before I even receive the paper stub that acts as a "receipt."
I checked my balance this morning as usual and was surprised to see a higher balance than I expected. When I looked at the transaction details for my account I found that my employer had made not one but two deposits. It took a minute for me to figure out but eventually I realized that what I was seeing was my regular paycheck plus my back-pay check from the 2001-2002 performance appraisal. Usually those are given out only as actual paper checks... but I guess our payroll department was feeling lazy this week.
To paraphrase Homer Simpson, Mmmmmmmm, $1,565.48 of unexpected money. Now I have to decide what to do with it...
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-14 07:14 am (UTC)I know all about the bi-weekly pay schedule. My work started instituting it about a year or so ago. At first it wasn't terribly bad because Chrissy was still getting paid every week. But then, guess what? HER business started doing bi-weekly as well, and to make matters worse her pay-Friday is the same as mine! So now it's like one Friday, $1,400... next Friday, nada. It is very rough, especially at the middle of the month, when all the bills come do. We actually have to take advantage of grace periods and such in order to make sure everything gets paid. And our list of payments is bigger than most... electric/gas, telephone, ISP, water, two car loans, student loan, smaller loan, mortgage, 3 credit cards, gas card, bank card, insurance, and a couple other very minor things. We manage to get everything paid with money left over, but it's often challenging.
Earlier this year, I was working a part-time suppliment job at Sears, which also paid bi-weekly but paid on the alternate Friday, which was good. However, the job was a pain in the arse, so it got dropped. Occassionally I try to donate plasma at $20-25 a visit to suppliment or sneak in some overtime at work. Chrissy said one of her bosses was considering moving the payday to the alternate Friday. That might be cool, but we'll have to see if that ever goes through.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-14 07:20 am (UTC)I've idly considered taking a part-time job again to help supplement income and speed things up for the house, but then I realize the only place I want to work at is BD's, and ... I really don't want to cross the customer/employee line with them. I enjoy their friendship too much the way it stands right now. So I'm left back at the drawing board wondering what the heck I should do for supplemental (but non-critical) income. I flat-out refuse to do any work on computers these days, I burned out on the consulting gig a long time ago.
I wonder if McD's is hiring....
no subject
Date: 2003-11-14 07:26 am (UTC)*innocent look*
no subject
Date: 2003-11-14 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-14 07:59 am (UTC)But I haven't bought the house yet. I have nowhere to put it.
I'm sure I'll be spending plenty enough as it is. Sam's Club and Binny's Beverage Depot will know me by my frist name before I'm done.
Weekly...
Date: 2003-11-14 03:14 pm (UTC)But of course I work at a crappy paying job. :(
A break for anal-retention.
Date: 2003-11-14 07:00 pm (UTC)You probably mean semi-weekly, as is my pay scheme.
Being hourly I get the perk of being paid for three weeks every now and then, which is usually when my big saving plans get kicked into motion.
Re: A break for anal-retention.
Date: 2003-11-18 06:13 pm (UTC)Whereas I get paid semi-monthly, on the 15th and 30/31st of every month.
Re: A break for anal-retention.
Date: 2003-11-18 08:30 pm (UTC)