Question

Okay TBM family I need your help. I have been crunching numbers for hours and I can’t seem to wrap my head around this situation or figure out a solution. What do you do if you need income from the BEGINNING of the month to pay MID-MONTH bills? Bill due dates can’t be moved, I tried. I thought about just holding my paycheck in my savings till the bills clear but that messes up my routine with my cash envelopes (every 2-ish weeks) Should I just “roll over” the money into the next BBP worksheet? I’m not sure how I would track this. I wouldn’t be doing a “zero-based” budget that way, but I don’t think with our particular income situation we even can do a zero based budget. Okay I’m done ranting, please help  

Answer 1

Personally, I "budget" the entire month in advance because I do need some money to rollover each paycheck. Once I can visualize the whole month I will know how much I can afford to put in my cash envelopes/sinking funds.  

Answer 2

I think you still roll it over. Its a zero based budget you’re just not spending it all. If I’m understanding what you’re asking. Like you need to use $200 from check 1 for a bill on the 17th and you use $200 from paycheck 2 towards that same bill. Right?  

Answer 3

Keep in mind that the Concept of budget by paycheck isn’t to spend the paycheck only during the timeframe until your next paycheck, but simple a method to assign each paycheck separately to your expenses. I generally have to allot money from alternating paychecks to pay for bills the occur after the follow paycheck. The bulk of my bills are due the first of the month and if I didn’t assign the money from the paycheck prior to that I wouldn’t have enough. It is a zero based budget as long as you have assigned all of your paycheck to something. I don’t roll it over into the next paycheck period because now I have to account for that money twice. You could if that made more sense to you. But if I need money from my 3/13 paycheck to cover my don’t tuition on 4/3 I just put that in the budget. Then I don’t have to account for preschool for my 3/27 budget. Yes I do look back when checks have cleared and I will even put it on my expense tracker and just not mark the date until it has cleared, simply to show that that money is already accounted for. That is just my method but figure out what makes most sense to you. And play around. If one way doesn’t work out then change it up the following month.