How much can I spend a week on a biweekly paycheck?
Bills arrive monthly, but a paycheck every two weeks does not line up with the month — and twice a year a third one turns up. Enter one paycheck, your monthly bills and what you save, and this gives you one weekly figure that holds all year.
How do you budget on a biweekly paycheck?
Add up what a year of paychecks brings in, take away a year of bills and savings, and divide what is left by 52. The result is one weekly spending figure that stays the same all year, whichever week the money actually arrives.
year out = (monthly bills + monthly savings) × 12
per week = (year in − year out) ÷ 52
Working in years sounds roundabout, but it is the only way to make a two-weekly income and monthly bills agree. Halve one paycheck and you get a weekly figure that is right in some months and wrong in others; the yearly sum is right in all of them.
Why do some months have three paychecks?
A year has 52 weeks, so a paycheck every two weeks arrives 26 times. Twelve months of two paychecks only account for 24 of them, so two months a year bring a third. Which months depends on the date of your first payday of the year; the calculator lists them for the next twelve months from your next payday. Paid weekly, the same thing happens four times a year, with five paydays in a month instead of four. And roughly once every eleven years, a two-weekly schedule fits 27 paydays into a single year.
Should I budget on two paychecks a month, or on all of them?
For most households, two. Build the month around two paychecks, pay the bills and savings from those, and treat each third paycheck as extra — a yearly bill paid in full, a top-up to the emergency fund, or money for a sinking fund. Spreading all 26 paychecks evenly gives a slightly larger weekly figure, but it only works if the extra money stays untouched until the weeks it is meant for, and in practice it rarely does.
Is biweekly the same as fortnightly or twice a month?
Biweekly and fortnightly are the same schedule: paid every 14 days, 26 times a year. Americans and Canadians usually say biweekly; people in the UK, Australia and New Zealand say fortnightly. Twice a month is different: two fixed dates, such as the 15th and the last day, 24 times a year, so every month looks the same and none brings a third paycheck. Paid once a month, as most salaries in the UAE and the Gulf are? Use the weekly budget calculator instead.
Which bills come out of which paycheck?
Line the bills up by due date. Anything due between one payday and the next comes out of the first of the two, and rent — the largest bill for most people — usually needs to be set aside from both paychecks before it is due. Moving the bill money to a separate account as soon as each paycheck lands keeps the spending account honest: whatever is left in it really is yours to spend.
A weekly number for the whole household
A weekly figure is easy to keep in one head and hard to keep in two. When two people spend from the same paychecks, each of them knows only what they spent, so by midweek both of their numbers are wrong. What makes a weekly budget work in a household is one shared view of what is left, updated whenever anyone spends.
Your weekly number, shared with the whole household
EXPENDR works from one monthly budget split into weekly limits, and it does not track paydays. What it adds is the part a calculator cannot: everyone in the household sees what is left this week the moment anyone spends. Weekly budgets, budget alerts and the weekly recap are free. English and Arabic, 55 currencies.
More free tools
- Daily budget calculator — what you can safely spend today
- Weekly budget calculator — turn a monthly salary into a weekly amount
- 50/30/20 budget calculator — split your salary into needs, wants and savings
- Sinking fund calculator — how much to set aside for big yearly bills