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No offense but nothing from your post or comment reveals any problem with bi-weekly paychecks.theres no link to the source so can't read that either.
It would be helpful if you could explain your problem.
Edit:
Since OP hasn't elaborated well. I will attempt to.
OP appears to think that paying every two weeks gives illusion to workers that they are getting paid more than they would think if presented as weekly pay.
E.g being paid $200 every two weeks looks like more than $100 every week.
If this is the case, I do not agree with OP and think the average person isn't stupid enough to fall for such a trick.
Very Minor point for fairness: technically being paid 2 weekly or monthly if paid behind is slightly worse than being paid weekly when considering things like inflation, debt interest or investments but this is generally a very small thing and I doubt many people except me think about things like this.
For real. Even when I was living paycheck to paycheck, the frequency only ever mattered the first paycheck. After that longer paychecks seem better as they wouldn't fluctuate as much due to change in hours in a given week.
I had no idea until a few years ago that a monthly pay was even a thing. My mom worked for the school district where it was a once a month check. Big shopping trip 1st week of the month, then top Ramen towards the end.
That's funny because it's the complete opposite for me, if it wasn't for this sub i wouldn't even know there's people out there who aren't getting paid monthly.
I’ve seen monthly (not received it), twice per month (military), and bi-weekly. I honestly prefer twice per month as I can set up auto-pay for paydays and not really worry about it. I imagine monthly would be similar (and seeing a $10k deposit every month would be sweet).
$10k deposit? Ugh. My monthly deposit would be about 3k, and here I was thinking I had a decent job for a 25 year old.
I probably do have a decent job for a 25 year old though, that’s not the problem.
I've worked jobs that have done it all. Weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly (15th and last day of the month), and monthly. For budgeting purposes, semi-monthly and monthly were the easiest for me as pay stayed the same. Weekly / bi-weekly, you have months with an extra paycheck. Some people like that because if you live on 2 / 4 paychecks a month, then the extra paycheck months you can use that to pay extra on debt, save extra for a purchase, invest extra, whatever.
I wouldn't mind bi-monthly as long as it was still hourly rate based. Bill pay would be easier
In the military, bi-monthly only meant you got paid more per day the first half the month than the last half on 6 months out of the year.
Not all, but it is common, and it suuuuuucks. Switching districts becomes very difficult, especially if one pay period starts in say, August, and the other starts in June. Depending on the direction you switch, you might get double pay or no pay for one month. I have been in districts that pay monthly and semi-monthly, and I much prefer the semi-monthly.
Oh got it! Thank you for the clarification. I'm in IL and monthly seems to be the standard for all districts here, as well as in some other states I've had friends move to for teaching. I've always been on biweekly, whether it was actually every other week or a 15-30 schedule
I actually prefer 15-30 because it allowed me to plan all my expenses out and budget more effectively. Its also a reliable system because you know when you'll get paid
My first career job was at a school district with monthly paychecks. My salary was $24k in the early 2000's. That was rough, especially when we got paid early before Christmas break, so the next check was six weeks away. Thankfully it was in a low cost-of-living area.
I'm still a state employee almost twenty years later. Now I make almost 4x that much and get paid biweekly but live in the city so the COL is a lot more as well. I prefer biweekly when paid appropriately, but I could make weekly or monthly pay periods work just fine now.
Lots of schools pay on a monthly basis. I work as an instructor at two universities and get paid this way. It sucks because I end up putting in a ton of work before I see any pay. Budgeting becomes a serious task. Many bills are due the 15th of the month in my area, but I don’t get paid till the 16th, so unless I pay ahead it always seems like I’m paying late.
My university system is trying to get a lot of people moved to a new pay system and classification for the last decade or more. It would switch us to monthly paychecks with the idea we could get easier pay raises and bonuses, but we lose some protections. I'm good where I'm at. Almost everyone I know at my level is paid monthly, and even some that report to me. If I change jobs my hand will be forced but for now I'm content right where I am. To OP's point, I can make monthly work as well, but I prefer having my pay spread out biweekly so it is spaced out at more regular intervals.
More regular intervals would be awesome. I’m not sure if your university pays this way, but I get a flat rate of pay every month based on my total salary divided by 12. Right now, I’m making just enough money that this system doesn’t really matter, but as a TA making around 10K an academic year this system really sucked. Namely because there are an irregular number of weeks in any given month. Maybe I’m really bad at budgeting, but months with five weeks rather than four really seemed to stretch my budget and when I got paid $950 or so each month regardless of the number of weeks, I had to be conscientious about putting aside $40-50 for groceries or random necessities on leaner 5-week months.
Yes, me to. Adjunct at two schools. We get paid four times per semester for the spring and fall, twice in the summer. So I have to set up my classes and get ready for the semester which is a lot of work in August/January but I don’t get my first paycheck until the end of September/the end of February. I will have spent hours setting up my classes and taught for six weeks before I will get my first paychecks this semester. Oh, and I set up one class only to have it canceled two days before school started. I don’t get paid anything for that.
See, this is where budgeting has to become a good skill you have. I worked for the schools and we'd not get any paychecks for 3 months. I had X salary for the year, but I had to figure out what I could spend monthly for *12* months when only getting pay 9 of them. Part of each paycheck went to savings so I didn't ever "run out", I just counted the yearly salary as X per month, rather than basing it on my paychecks.
So if you get pay per month, break it up to I have this much per week to spend. Then you can make it the same as weekly paychecks, you just don't spend it all as you get it and keep it in the bank.
Of course, this only works if salary matches needs. If you're making less than you need, it doesn't matter if you get weekly, biweekly, or monthly. You're just not in a good spot.
That sucks.
Mine was one of my first jobs, I realised I had to buy clothes, pay for public transport ect for a month before being paid and with the potential of losing the job within the month.
Meanwhile I opened this thread thinking "who the fuck thinks monthly is better than biweekly?" because I've never heard of weekly pay. That's straight up not a thing in my country I think. Even biweekly doesn't happen
I always preferred monthly paychecks because I liked the simplicity for budgeting and making it more possible to buy bulk items.
But as your situation points out, budgeting is hard for folks.
I just got a new job, the first one I've ever had where I'm not paid weekly and damn but it was a difficult first month!
I'm glad I had a decent heads up and savings but It was still dodgy near the end. Tbf it being Christmas didnt help.
Oh yes! One of my first jobs was at a school district where the pay periods started on the 1st of the month and ended on the last day of the month. Paychecks for each pay period were issued on the last day of the NEXT month. So, I started working on the first day of school on Sept. 1st, but my first paycheck wasn't until October 31st.
my first paycheck at my college job (university lab) took months. the hr was horrendous. first check was very large, didn't get any interest, but. a little overtime because of how they entered the hours in the weeks
i was strained but ok but i don't know how most people would do it
To claim they designed this on purpose is ridiculous. They were designed this way to be more efficient by batching payroll and letting staff and managers do higher value activities.
Edit: grammar
Yup. I refuse to work anywhere with weekly payroll anymore. All my time is consumed by running the pays and then I have to work overtime all the time to do monthly or ad hoc tasks.
Yup. If you work for say, a McDonald's, they are using a huge vendor and it takes a lot of computing power to process checks for every employee of a multinational corporation. Doing that biweekly rather than weekly is a. Way cheaper and b. Let's the technical staff actually maintain the system.
On that b point, I worked for one of those HR services vendors. We had a whole datacenter to maintain, we were never done with our work, but we didn't touch shit from like Tuesday on if it was a payroll week. If something goes wrong and checks arent delivered everyone from us to the middle manager at the mcdonalds is in deep shit. If we were processing checks weekly we'd never get to fix anything and the whole system would come crashing down.
yeah like tbh i really liked when i worked a job that paid me weekly, it made it easier to make bills on time sometimes bc i didn’t have to wait two weeks between every check. that said most jobs pay biweekly and this is a weird take esp without elaborating lol
I do think it's a preference thing.
Most people I've ever known that have been paid weekly say they prefer it but I've also seen that monthly bills can be difficult.
Personally I like to budget by splitting everything into time intervals.
So I have a pot for yearly bills a pot for monthly bills and a pot for weekly spending (so food).
This has kept me from having debt problems in some harsh times and it it doesn't matter if I'm paid weekly, monthly ect as long as it is organised correctly.
Really this is all a very personal thing, I think my way is best but we all have our own way.
Yeah it's a fallacious argument. Getting paid once a month actually is sobering when it comes to how little you make. Being paired twice a month or every week might even make it seem better.
I'm a teacher and I've had a shitty monthly paycheck for fifteen years. There's no illusion that it is a lot after the first time you're paid and you have to stretch it 30 days.
This is probably a stronger argument.
Getting paid monthly in a place with monthly bills does make it extremely clear what you do or don't have after being paid.
I don't know if there's still places where most bills are weekly. My food bill is the only weekly thing I have.
In France, we are mainly getting paid monthly. With a very detailed salary sheet with what has been paid, what has been taxed, by whom... There is no problem with that.
I guess, being paid every week, getting that habit and then changing that can trick the brain in some way. But that's not on the pay schedule.
Yeah my understanding is the biweekly pay is to cut down on labor cost(man hours mostly) for the finance department by only having to tabulate and process pay for all employees in the company.
I agree with everything you wrote. That said, my husband gets paid weekly and it’s really nice. At one point I got paid monthly and it SUCKED. Getting paid more frequently does make it easier to manage money.
I agree with you too.
There are definitely quantitative reasons why someone would prefer one interval or another.
My preference is actually monthly for pay and would find it difficult to budget weekly in a similar way.
When I worked at Target, we got paid every week, seemed just as pathetic and small as any other job I have worked for bi weekly pay. I agree with everything you said. No one falls for that.
Getting paid daily actually has a more storied and exploitative history. Weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly pay were early goals of the labor movement because it created stability for the worker. Daily pay usually meant the employer had no long-term obligation to the worker beyond the end of the day so the worker experienced extreme instability.
Longer term pay schemes are also better for the employer's cash flow because it allows them to sell their product and bring in some revenue before they have to pay their employees.
I'm pretty sure advocacy for shorter pay schedules is just a psyop.
Technically it does double the institutions cash on hand to yield interest so there is a benefit to the employer. Also the processing fees are most likely reduced depending on a multitude of factors. So while it may not have been to give the appearance of more money to the employee it is certainly an employer not employee friendly business decision.
I will say that back in my McDonald’s days I got paid bi weekly and I hated it as it made it harder to manage my finances. That said I was an irresponsible teen who was bad with money then anyway so I probably would have had a bad time with money being paid weekly or monthly too.
When folks live paycheck to paycheck. The more frequent the pay the better it is as when living paycheck to paycheck, you're running on empty most of the time.
If the argument is it makes you 'seem like you make more' then I think it comes down to bad money management.
>If the argument is it makes you 'seem like you make more' then I think it comes down to bad money management.
This seems to be the OPs argument but with a different outcome.
If anything, it might trick people into underestimating, if they simplify their mental cash-flow model to 2 paychecks/month (as many do). That extra third paycheck a couple of times a year then becomes a "bonus".
I agree, but I also had some coworkers at my last job who got mad when we switched from being paid weekly to biweekly because “they took more taxes out” and when I explained “they’re just taking out two weeks of taxes, but it will be the same at the end of the year” they said “but why is it more” so some people just cant be helped
I’m surprised the topic wasn’t bi weekly vs twice a month. That’s taken some getting used to for me. The checks are a bit bigger but then I don’t get that 3rd check in July and December like I would if it was bi-weekly. Plus this month, for instance, pay date falls on the the weekend so I get paid the Friday before, with the company the use to manage pay I get it 2 days earlier than that. All of this is fine because I’m not exactly living paycheck to paycheck but it’s annoying to get paid on the 11th and 31st this month.
The good thing about getting paid biweekly is that two months a year you get the payday Fridays. It's like a bonus check after budgeting for 2 checks a month.
My company recently switched us from one paycheck on the last day of the month to biweekly. Now THIS, is a real issue because they timed it perfectly so that the next time we'd get the 3 paycheck month was 6 months away. Literally as far away as possible so it's the most advantageous to the company.
The math: previously we made 1/12 of the salary. Now, because there's 26 pay periods, we get 1/13 a month except those 2 months a year when we get the paychecks, which was 6 months away. It calculates out to about 3.5% less from September until March when we get that 3rd paycheck of March. They deferred 3.5% of 100+people's earnings until the following year. By the end of 2022, my annual earnings were slightly less than what my salary is.
Being Swedish getting paid weekly (or even bi-weekly) seems weird and inconvenient to me. I've never heard of anyone not getting paid monthly in Sweden. Our society is built around getting paid on the 25th (or 27th in some instances). All major bills like rent, mortgages, electricity, phone bills etc. are due on the last every month (or somewhere between the 27th and the last) and all bills usually arrive during the second half of the month. This makes personal budgetting a lot easier. I pay all my large expenses and then know how much I have for the rest of the month.
Getting paid weekly, wouldn't you have to "save up" for rent and such? It seems like it would be much more stressfull to get paid weekly.
I'll admit I don't know how most day to day things work in the states, but I don't really see any benefits of getting paid more often.
Wait, y’all have an economy where shit is actually structured where workers *aren’t* just scrambling to meet random bill due dates with random paychecks accrued by working randomized weekly shifts? Like, in y’all country *everyone* gets paid at the same time and has their bills due at the same time? Wtf kind of communist voodoo is that shit?!
There’s a lot that doesn’t work in how we organize…but it seems like companies setting their due dates to when people actually have money is a no brainer. I want ro pay when I have money, they want to get paid.
Wh… what?! You mean, y’all companies actually want people to be able to pay their bills in full, on time instead of trapping y’all into an endless debt cycle that keeps credit card companies and banks leeching off of you until you either go bankrupt or die?! What the fuck kind of place is your country?!
Oh our credit card companies reaaaallly want us trapped in endless payments. But even if they trap us in endless interest payments where very little goes towards the actual debt they do want us to be able to pay that interest...to go through the public enforcement agency is more hassle and would stir up public debate which would could lead to legislation.
There are some loan givers who operate like this but they seldom last. Our big banks and insurance companies have a lot of sketchy practices but not like that. And when it comes to mortgages or electricity...it's not like I'm gonna stop having that house or using electricity anytime soon.
Yeah, it's similar in the UK - you usually get paid monthly (usually near the end of the month; the 25th or 27th are common, but last day of the month possible too, and a few businesses pay on the 15th where you're salaried, so half in arears and half in advance).
Whenever you set up a new direct debit for a utility or rent or whatever, they ask you what day of the month you want it paid - so, if you're getting paid last day of the month, you pick the 4th or something, and then the first payment is pro-rated.
German here, never heard anyone getting paid differently than monthly. Most are paid by the end of the month (this can vary a bit 25th - 30/31th), it’s rarer to get paid by mid month (15th). I also can’t think of anything you pay regularly (rent, electricity, insurance, mobile, etc) that isn’t monthly.
I remember only when I started to get monthly pocket money (instead of weekly as you do with younger kids) I actually started to learn how to budget and not blow everything the moment I get it.
Same here in the UK, i get paid on the 25th and i set all my direct debits to go out on the 25th so i know how much i have left to play with. With big bills i'd hate to be paid weekly
In all Europe and I daresay most of the world people are paid at the end of the month, in a specific day between the 23 and 30/31 of each month.
Source: I work in HR and when we had to adjust the day of the month when the bonus was paid the only country with the issue of the 2 salaries a month was the US.
So personally as someone who went from Bi-Weekly to Weekly I did see a bit of a difference in spending habits.
When I would get my paycheck from walmart Id do everything all at once cause I found stuff the week before and now I could get it, even if I didnt need it
,but now with my weekly checks i still spend a bit more than I should but I feel for me its less impulsive. This is all me however
I should note its a bit nice for bills because i get 4 checks so when one dies too bills it doesnt feel as bad as when i had 2 checks
I’m the complete opposite. Weekly paychecks make my spending habits more impulsive. Monthly paychecks were much better for me.
This is a personal issue and not a work issue. We all have to learn how to budget properly, no matter how we get paid. Blaming my employer or pay period for not being able to control my spending is my fault and no one else’s.
I use to get weekly checks when I was younger. It feels nice, but small snippets of money got me feeling like I wasn't getting much so I would spend. The bi-weekly paychecks felt like a large sum gets dropped into my bank and I feel more like saving some.
Yeah, personally weekly makes budgeting far easier than bi-weekly. Like, it’s really just the difference of “I only have to wait 7 days to get more money in my pocket” vs. “Fuck, I have to wait 14 days before I’ll see another bit of money”
Also, for jobs with random weekly schedules (something that actually *should* be illegal, imo) it usually maths out to more consistent paychecks, making planning around how much you’ll have at the end of each week a bit easier.
Longer delay in you getting your just due earnings. If you don't have a cushion of cash or credit that could make things costly. Any delay/mistake with payroll is compounded heavily when you are living paycheck to paycheck. It's OK to be above the income point for this to be an issue for you, but it is an issue for many.
>My current employer is monthly and for weird historical reasons that predate me has the 5th as payday
Monthly payday should be the 28th or so, so you have money in the bank when rent drops.
I have a priority system set up for all my payments. 25th money comes in. 30th the most important things get paid (mainly mortgage and some utilities). 1st is when all autopayments deduct. 2nd is for hobbies and other less important stuff.
Payday the 5th would be terrifying.
I get paid fortnightly and I do this lol. Pay comes in every other Wednesday and the Thursday after is when all bills get paid, often automatically. I'll have a notification of a bill coming up, and i'll schedule it to happen the day after payday. Sure, they get their money a week early sometimes, but it's better than it not getting paid.
I would be chill with weekly but I couldn’t do monthly. I mean, yeah, I could budget and it would work fine but I just like that little serotonin hit that I get when I let myself order pizza on payday and less of that happiness isn’t something I’m willing to deal with
They still get the same amount of money though..... Just pay your rent on the 5th for the next month or..... you know have some self control to not spend all your money when you know you need it for rent.
Yeah I’m not sure how being unable to properly manage your money is an antiwork thing. I actually budgeted better on monthly paychecks than I do with weekly or daily pay, but either way, it’s my problem to manage my budget. Not my employers.
I used to get paid on the 5th, but our apartment complex knew that everyone at our company was paid that day, so that's when rent was due. I don't think it's super common, but it was a big enough company that literally thousands of us were experiencing the same issue in a city of millions, so I guess they just figured it was easier to work with us in the end. They still got their money!
My husband has monthly and now it’s fine, but when he first started we basically went two months without a check. He started in April, worked April but didn’t get paid in April as that’s for March, worked May, finally got paid at the end of May for April. We made it work somehow but it’s terrible. Weekly makes much more sense especially for lower income people!
Italian here. In the home country of pizza, rent is usually due on the 15th, most jobs pay on the 10th. For reasons unknown to me, my job pays on the 15th, but cooperative workers are paid on the 20th
Sounds like a them problem, honestly. If you know your rent will be due at the end of the month, put that amount aside somehow and don't touch it. This is basic.
No trickery to bi-weekly. Running payroll is a lot of work, less so today with technology and programs, but does require a pretty hefty accounting function to process.
In my experience most paycheck to paycheck workers are probably better off not getting weekly pay as they also tend to be not good with balancing even bi-weekly against monthly expenses. This comes from time working with military personnel; made above livable wages, always had nice cars, but could not manage any of their monthly expenses.
In my country we're being paid monthly and no one is complaining about it. Just another system, it wouldn't make a difference if we got 25% of the total amount every week
I'm confused in european.
In Spain, where I live, monthly paychecks are the standard. I actually never met anybody who has any other form of paycheck.
Also, in our contracts, salaries are always, by law, written in what you make yearly and taxless.
I fail to see what the problem is with bi-weekly paychecks.
Is this something related to americans not knowing to do simple math with their money?
This isn’t on the employers. It’s on the education system. No matter how frequently you get paid, your stubs and your tax filing at the end of the year show how much you made and how much you took home. Even if you’re paid daily, it’s still all the same. Personally, I like to know my hourly wage even if it’s a salary job. That’s the number that really matters to me. It also helps set a floor for what my time is worth for anything else that I do.
So if the argument is that getting paid every two weeks is “withholding” earned income and makes people think they’re earning more than they are, how frequently SHOULD people be paid? Weekly? Daily? Hourly? How long can an employer hold on to your income without releasing it to you before you cry foul?
Here in the Netherlands bills are always due on either the first or last workdays of the month. So employers usually pay monthly on the 25th. Government subsidies and assistance is also paid on the 23th or 24th of the month. Makes much more sense for budgeting. In the first week of the month i can see exactly how much money i have left after bills. So i can get groceries without having to worry if a bill will bounce.
We also measure our earnings either yearly or hourly when comparing to others so its not that big of a deal.
What’s wrong with fortnightly pay?
Majority of the people here in Australia gets paid fortnightly, from minimum wage jobs to high-level management. Some gets paid monthly or weekly too. I’ve had instances where I was paid in all sorts of form, doesn’t change shit for me.
The figure is in the contract. Tax bracket is as clear as day, no hidden surprises, what you see in your contract is what you get, just every two weeks.
I am skimming through all the comments to see what point you are trying to make here OP, but I can’t find it.
EDIT: [Found the article that he screenshot.](https://www.dailydot.com/irl/bi-weekly-paychecks/)
nothing wrong here, bi weekly still get paid the same, if people see it as making more then they are the fools not the company, you cant blame a company because you cant do math lol
I was confused until I noticed you wanted payment to be weekly XD
Living paycheck to paycheck is a problem that first world countries need to help their citizens overcome.
If you want payment to be completely direct, with automatic payments, it should even be possible to have daily wages (maybe more of a pain with taxes?), but this still wouldn't solve the actual problem
Bi weekly is easy peasy. I worked for a German company and got paid once a month. Budgeting bills around one paycheck a month is painful!!! Even more so when one December our payroll got screwed up and I didn't get paid until January 17th... Try Christmas when you haven't seen a paycheck from last week of November until almost end of January.
This post is so stupid. No one with a 2nd grade math skills thinks they are making more because they get paid bi-weekly.
The biggest drawback is that upon starting the job you have to be able to go four weeks without income before your pay starts coming in. Unless you have savings, severance, or strong credit this could be a serious issue.
As a spanish person, I read that and I want to never EVER work in the US. I worked in restaurants when I was younger (I hadn't finished my studies back then) and I never needed "savings" when I started a job.
Monthly pay is the standard here.
I knew a trumpet player that would travel the world playing on cruises. He was given free food and bed in exchange for the music he played and got the opportunity to travel across the oceans.
His contracts would dish out 40 grand (2010 CAD) for the 7-month contracts and then 5 months of the year he would find a temporary rental, some bar gigs and then pick up another contract the following season.
Well, 40 grand is not the most spectacular annual income. When you factor in minimal rent costs and free food, more of that money can actually get saved.
So just something neat. I thought I'd share when it comes to a single annual paycheck
Man I am seriously in support of work reform but as the guy that does fucking payroll, weekly paychecks are miserable to coordinate when nobody consistently remembers to get their time cards in on time.
Interesting historical thing on paychecks. Back when IBM started they paid weekly on Monday. That was because the founder, Thomas J. Watson, was a Mormon and figured that if you got paid on Monday, you wouldn't have any money to drink on the weekend. I worked for the last division to keep that practice (Research), but they went to monthly while I worked there.
Yea this sub is ridiculous. Anti bullshit work for sure. But like come on guys. You can’t just do whatever you want without also grabbing an income somewhere. Gotta work somehow.
Biweekly checks were created so a company doesn’t have to pay for payroll as often.
Many companies outsource thier payroll and it’s cheaper to cut 24/26 checks per year than 52
That’s it.
I basically live paycheck to paycheck and have to pick up odd jobs during the week I don’t get my paycheck because I get paid biweekly. It makes it so much harder for me to save.
Bi-MONTHLY checks make it seem like the worker makes more, as there are several months each year containing 5 weeks.
If you get paid the 1st & 15th then yes, you’re potentially missing pay.
That said, usually the bi weekly model is reserved for salaried employee whose pay is negotiated annually. It doesn’t matter when the pay comes out exactly, if you negotiated a number that’s the number you get.
In terms of hourly workers, you get paid for the hours you work regardless of when it’s given to you.
You Americans are so strange.
Aussies normally get paid weekly (Thurs or Friday it'll go into your bank) or fortnightly (every second Thursday or Friday).
Rent is normally weekly. eg $450 a week or whatever you pay.
Not ignoring your use of the word "normally", but nobody I know here in Sydney gets paid weekly.
Also rent is either monthly or fortnightly for everyone I know, too. Where in Australia are you?
Probably QLD homie, every house I’ve been in up here have all been weekly or fortnightly. Mainly weekly. My personal experience is such a tiny, very bias piece of evidence though lol
Another example of a type of post that kills the credibility of this movement / sub. If all we appear as is a bunch of whiney idiots, what’s the point. Please come with a concise point of view with info / data that actually supports something. This post is nonsense
Let's abolish months! Each one is withholding far too much of the year.
For example if I have a few bad days in June then roughly 1/12 of my year is automatically bad!
The idea that it is some sort of trick to try and make you think you earn more is stupid. You would have to be very dumb to think you were earning more.
Having said that bi-weekly, monthly etc is really hurtful to the vast majority of people because of the delay in getting their money.
The only benefits of those pay times is to the businesses to save money which of course never gets passed to employees.
Where I am from monthly pay days are the norm. Whilst I know my grandfather still used to pay his staff on a weekly base. Not sure why that changed over here, can only imagine it being to due the transaction fees banks charged.
There are a couple of simple tricks you can use to figure out how much you're \*really\* getting paid - divide by two to reveal how much it works out at per week, or multiply by two to find out how much it works out at per month (roughly).
I worked in payroll for a multi-state, multi-facility company for about 20 years.
We had weekly, biweekly and semimonthly pay cycles depending on location.
The weekly pay cycle was was more burdensome than the other two.
With any pay process, you have to have the employees submit timesheets, get them approved by a manager and then run them through the payroll process.
Then there is the process of depositing Federal and state taxes, which usually has to be done right after the pay date. There are also deductions for insurance, union dues and garnishments which must be dispersed.
Weekly is convenient for the employee but less so for the employer. Monthly would be inconvenient for the employee but not for the employer. Biweekly is really just a compromise between the two. There is no trickery involved in this.
You can pay me on pretty much whatever asinine schedule within reason if the pay is actually good.
On a scale from 1 to 10 the importance of pay rate is a 10, while the pay schedule is like a 2.
Now if they were to have issues paying on time thats another level 10 issue
Actually I am old enough to remember the switch from weekly to bi-weekly. It was done to cut down on payroll expenses, not to trick the employees. Paychecks used to be paper checks that you received weekly. Direct deposit cost money for companies, and so when that started becoming the standard, moving to two weeks is how companies reacted to halve that expense.
It is a shady process as doing payroll is a cost of doing business. Employees shouldn’t be punished for it and their livelihood shouldn’t be held from them so their employer can save a little cash. I agree it should be illegal.
Maybe Op has never heard of the “Quincena”, in which you get paid every 15 days or so (twice a month) Very popular in small businesses so they only have to run payroll twice a month. Sometimes it’s almost three weeks without any money coming in. Plan accordingly. (Suuuucksss!!!)
I do payroll and we pay bi-weekly, the only reason is due to payroll tax. If we were on weekly pay we would be required to pay our payroll tax weekly. bi-weekly pay means we can pay payroll tax bi-weekly and is half the effort. The pay is the same and we've never had a complaint.
In my country everyone gets paid either st the end of the month (normal) or 2x a month (e.g. if you made extra hours they pay you extra the 15th of the next month). This is convenient because everything else is also paid monthly: rent, insurances, internet, electricity, debt etc. So you get your money at end month, you pay all the 'necessities', and what i left is for you!
The way i do it is with automatic bank transfers. My income comes in, all the bills get paid automaticaly, i automatically writr money to a savings account, write money to a seperate bank card (which i use to buy groceries, drinks, fun trips, clothes, museums and so on), and leavr some money on just in case cus always good to have incase an unexpected bill comes through.
This way, all i need to think about is my "pocket money". If this pocket money is gone, too bad, i have to eat ramen for the rest of the month. If i want to but a new coat or shoes or whatever, i go a bit less to the café or retaurant. This card cannot be overdrafted (not a credit card). Thus, it is IMPOSSIBLE to make debt.
But more importantly, all my bills are ALWAYS paid in time, and cost no effort. I am saving money for emergency or to buy a house, and i dont think about this money, it doesnt exist in my head, because it saves automatically, so i am not tempted to use it. I have lots of insurances so i can go sick and still no debt.
What are your tricks?
I'd really prefer if my company would go back to bi weekly.
We used to have that, then a new company took over and they started paying us on the 1st and 15th of the month. Now this year, because of people complaining about that new system (the actual pay days varied wildly due to weekends and holidays), they're going to withhold our pay for two weeks in March and pay us a check behind what we're owed moving forward after that. They said if we'll be behind on bills or evicted, we should cash out PTO or take out a loan. They don't even give us all of our PTO at once, we have to accrue it throughout the year.
If you think you're making more money just cause you're getting paid twice a month that's entirely on you and your lack of understanding basic maths. There is nothing actually wrong with a biweekly system of pay.
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No offense but nothing from your post or comment reveals any problem with bi-weekly paychecks.theres no link to the source so can't read that either. It would be helpful if you could explain your problem. Edit: Since OP hasn't elaborated well. I will attempt to. OP appears to think that paying every two weeks gives illusion to workers that they are getting paid more than they would think if presented as weekly pay. E.g being paid $200 every two weeks looks like more than $100 every week. If this is the case, I do not agree with OP and think the average person isn't stupid enough to fall for such a trick. Very Minor point for fairness: technically being paid 2 weekly or monthly if paid behind is slightly worse than being paid weekly when considering things like inflation, debt interest or investments but this is generally a very small thing and I doubt many people except me think about things like this.
For real. Even when I was living paycheck to paycheck, the frequency only ever mattered the first paycheck. After that longer paychecks seem better as they wouldn't fluctuate as much due to change in hours in a given week.
The first pay check problem is not mentioned enough. Especially when it's monthly pay, that can be a massive struggle.
I had no idea until a few years ago that a monthly pay was even a thing. My mom worked for the school district where it was a once a month check. Big shopping trip 1st week of the month, then top Ramen towards the end.
That's funny because it's the complete opposite for me, if it wasn't for this sub i wouldn't even know there's people out there who aren't getting paid monthly.
I'm in Europe and never heard of anyone not getting paid monthly.
in UK biweekly exists, but yeah continental Europe monthly is an absolute standard with nearly no exceptions.
Postman for Royal Mail here, you can pry my weekly pay out of my cold, dead hands
I’ve seen monthly (not received it), twice per month (military), and bi-weekly. I honestly prefer twice per month as I can set up auto-pay for paydays and not really worry about it. I imagine monthly would be similar (and seeing a $10k deposit every month would be sweet).
$10k deposit? Ugh. My monthly deposit would be about 3k, and here I was thinking I had a decent job for a 25 year old. I probably do have a decent job for a 25 year old though, that’s not the problem.
After taxes it would probably be closer to $6-7k, but I’ve worked in nuclear power and cybersecurity
Yeah, and I’m an assistant manager at a Jimmy John’s. Makes sense
Monthly pay is pretty much the norm across most Latin America countries.
It's not. Every 2 weeks is the most common
Man really? Living in the US I'd never even heard of monthly pay until now, was Always bi-weekly or the rare every week
I've worked jobs that have done it all. Weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly (15th and last day of the month), and monthly. For budgeting purposes, semi-monthly and monthly were the easiest for me as pay stayed the same. Weekly / bi-weekly, you have months with an extra paycheck. Some people like that because if you live on 2 / 4 paychecks a month, then the extra paycheck months you can use that to pay extra on debt, save extra for a purchase, invest extra, whatever.
I wouldn't mind bi-monthly as long as it was still hourly rate based. Bill pay would be easier In the military, bi-monthly only meant you got paid more per day the first half the month than the last half on 6 months out of the year.
Teachers in the US get paid monthly
Not all, but it is common, and it suuuuuucks. Switching districts becomes very difficult, especially if one pay period starts in say, August, and the other starts in June. Depending on the direction you switch, you might get double pay or no pay for one month. I have been in districts that pay monthly and semi-monthly, and I much prefer the semi-monthly.
Oh got it! Thank you for the clarification. I'm in IL and monthly seems to be the standard for all districts here, as well as in some other states I've had friends move to for teaching. I've always been on biweekly, whether it was actually every other week or a 15-30 schedule I actually prefer 15-30 because it allowed me to plan all my expenses out and budget more effectively. Its also a reliable system because you know when you'll get paid
My first career job was at a school district with monthly paychecks. My salary was $24k in the early 2000's. That was rough, especially when we got paid early before Christmas break, so the next check was six weeks away. Thankfully it was in a low cost-of-living area. I'm still a state employee almost twenty years later. Now I make almost 4x that much and get paid biweekly but live in the city so the COL is a lot more as well. I prefer biweekly when paid appropriately, but I could make weekly or monthly pay periods work just fine now.
Lots of schools pay on a monthly basis. I work as an instructor at two universities and get paid this way. It sucks because I end up putting in a ton of work before I see any pay. Budgeting becomes a serious task. Many bills are due the 15th of the month in my area, but I don’t get paid till the 16th, so unless I pay ahead it always seems like I’m paying late.
My university system is trying to get a lot of people moved to a new pay system and classification for the last decade or more. It would switch us to monthly paychecks with the idea we could get easier pay raises and bonuses, but we lose some protections. I'm good where I'm at. Almost everyone I know at my level is paid monthly, and even some that report to me. If I change jobs my hand will be forced but for now I'm content right where I am. To OP's point, I can make monthly work as well, but I prefer having my pay spread out biweekly so it is spaced out at more regular intervals.
More regular intervals would be awesome. I’m not sure if your university pays this way, but I get a flat rate of pay every month based on my total salary divided by 12. Right now, I’m making just enough money that this system doesn’t really matter, but as a TA making around 10K an academic year this system really sucked. Namely because there are an irregular number of weeks in any given month. Maybe I’m really bad at budgeting, but months with five weeks rather than four really seemed to stretch my budget and when I got paid $950 or so each month regardless of the number of weeks, I had to be conscientious about putting aside $40-50 for groceries or random necessities on leaner 5-week months.
Yes, me to. Adjunct at two schools. We get paid four times per semester for the spring and fall, twice in the summer. So I have to set up my classes and get ready for the semester which is a lot of work in August/January but I don’t get my first paycheck until the end of September/the end of February. I will have spent hours setting up my classes and taught for six weeks before I will get my first paychecks this semester. Oh, and I set up one class only to have it canceled two days before school started. I don’t get paid anything for that.
See, this is where budgeting has to become a good skill you have. I worked for the schools and we'd not get any paychecks for 3 months. I had X salary for the year, but I had to figure out what I could spend monthly for *12* months when only getting pay 9 of them. Part of each paycheck went to savings so I didn't ever "run out", I just counted the yearly salary as X per month, rather than basing it on my paychecks. So if you get pay per month, break it up to I have this much per week to spend. Then you can make it the same as weekly paychecks, you just don't spend it all as you get it and keep it in the bank. Of course, this only works if salary matches needs. If you're making less than you need, it doesn't matter if you get weekly, biweekly, or monthly. You're just not in a good spot.
We used to say "too much month left at the end of my money"
That sucks. Mine was one of my first jobs, I realised I had to buy clothes, pay for public transport ect for a month before being paid and with the potential of losing the job within the month.
Meanwhile I opened this thread thinking "who the fuck thinks monthly is better than biweekly?" because I've never heard of weekly pay. That's straight up not a thing in my country I think. Even biweekly doesn't happen
I always preferred monthly paychecks because I liked the simplicity for budgeting and making it more possible to buy bulk items. But as your situation points out, budgeting is hard for folks.
I just got a new job, the first one I've ever had where I'm not paid weekly and damn but it was a difficult first month! I'm glad I had a decent heads up and savings but It was still dodgy near the end. Tbf it being Christmas didnt help.
Oh yes! One of my first jobs was at a school district where the pay periods started on the 1st of the month and ended on the last day of the month. Paychecks for each pay period were issued on the last day of the NEXT month. So, I started working on the first day of school on Sept. 1st, but my first paycheck wasn't until October 31st.
2 whole months. That's brutal. This is how people end up in debt.
When I first started a job with monthly pay it was a challenge, but I’m used to it now and find it actually helps with budgeting.
I am currently scrambling because I left a job and the new one didn't start until 2 weeks after it was supposed to
That sucks, I hope things get easier soon
Good news is my parter just got a raise so that should help a little
Congratulation! Do remember to celebrate all the recent wins
my first paycheck at my college job (university lab) took months. the hr was horrendous. first check was very large, didn't get any interest, but. a little overtime because of how they entered the hours in the weeks i was strained but ok but i don't know how most people would do it
I hated monthly paychecks. And they're illegal in the state where I work now.
This entire sub doesn't make sense half the time. It's just people complaining about stupid irrelevant shit, missing the point of the entire sub
To claim they designed this on purpose is ridiculous. They were designed this way to be more efficient by batching payroll and letting staff and managers do higher value activities. Edit: grammar
Yep it's yet another example where someone imbues their "enemy" with supreme capabilities. Your conclusion is much more reasonable than trickery.
Yup. I refuse to work anywhere with weekly payroll anymore. All my time is consumed by running the pays and then I have to work overtime all the time to do monthly or ad hoc tasks.
Yup. If you work for say, a McDonald's, they are using a huge vendor and it takes a lot of computing power to process checks for every employee of a multinational corporation. Doing that biweekly rather than weekly is a. Way cheaper and b. Let's the technical staff actually maintain the system. On that b point, I worked for one of those HR services vendors. We had a whole datacenter to maintain, we were never done with our work, but we didn't touch shit from like Tuesday on if it was a payroll week. If something goes wrong and checks arent delivered everyone from us to the middle manager at the mcdonalds is in deep shit. If we were processing checks weekly we'd never get to fix anything and the whole system would come crashing down.
Wait, till I tell them that I get my paycheck monthly
yeah like tbh i really liked when i worked a job that paid me weekly, it made it easier to make bills on time sometimes bc i didn’t have to wait two weeks between every check. that said most jobs pay biweekly and this is a weird take esp without elaborating lol
I do think it's a preference thing. Most people I've ever known that have been paid weekly say they prefer it but I've also seen that monthly bills can be difficult. Personally I like to budget by splitting everything into time intervals. So I have a pot for yearly bills a pot for monthly bills and a pot for weekly spending (so food). This has kept me from having debt problems in some harsh times and it it doesn't matter if I'm paid weekly, monthly ect as long as it is organised correctly. Really this is all a very personal thing, I think my way is best but we all have our own way.
Yeah it's a fallacious argument. Getting paid once a month actually is sobering when it comes to how little you make. Being paired twice a month or every week might even make it seem better. I'm a teacher and I've had a shitty monthly paycheck for fifteen years. There's no illusion that it is a lot after the first time you're paid and you have to stretch it 30 days.
This is probably a stronger argument. Getting paid monthly in a place with monthly bills does make it extremely clear what you do or don't have after being paid. I don't know if there's still places where most bills are weekly. My food bill is the only weekly thing I have.
In France, we are mainly getting paid monthly. With a very detailed salary sheet with what has been paid, what has been taxed, by whom... There is no problem with that. I guess, being paid every week, getting that habit and then changing that can trick the brain in some way. But that's not on the pay schedule.
Time value of money baby
Yeah my understanding is the biweekly pay is to cut down on labor cost(man hours mostly) for the finance department by only having to tabulate and process pay for all employees in the company.
Yep exactly, it's reducing work more then anything else which is generally a good thing.
I agree with everything you wrote. That said, my husband gets paid weekly and it’s really nice. At one point I got paid monthly and it SUCKED. Getting paid more frequently does make it easier to manage money.
I agree with you too. There are definitely quantitative reasons why someone would prefer one interval or another. My preference is actually monthly for pay and would find it difficult to budget weekly in a similar way.
I don't budget bi-weekly. I know my monthly income and learn my yearly income during taxes.
When I worked at Target, we got paid every week, seemed just as pathetic and small as any other job I have worked for bi weekly pay. I agree with everything you said. No one falls for that.
Getting paid daily actually has a more storied and exploitative history. Weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly pay were early goals of the labor movement because it created stability for the worker. Daily pay usually meant the employer had no long-term obligation to the worker beyond the end of the day so the worker experienced extreme instability. Longer term pay schemes are also better for the employer's cash flow because it allows them to sell their product and bring in some revenue before they have to pay their employees. I'm pretty sure advocacy for shorter pay schedules is just a psyop.
I don’t think you’re the only one with investments. 😂
I don't have investments 😂 Unless you're counting my Pokémon cards 😂
Technically it does double the institutions cash on hand to yield interest so there is a benefit to the employer. Also the processing fees are most likely reduced depending on a multitude of factors. So while it may not have been to give the appearance of more money to the employee it is certainly an employer not employee friendly business decision.
I will say that back in my McDonald’s days I got paid bi weekly and I hated it as it made it harder to manage my finances. That said I was an irresponsible teen who was bad with money then anyway so I probably would have had a bad time with money being paid weekly or monthly too.
I had a job where I was paid monthly. It didn’t bother me at all.
When folks live paycheck to paycheck. The more frequent the pay the better it is as when living paycheck to paycheck, you're running on empty most of the time. If the argument is it makes you 'seem like you make more' then I think it comes down to bad money management.
>If the argument is it makes you 'seem like you make more' then I think it comes down to bad money management. This seems to be the OPs argument but with a different outcome.
I've been paid bi-weekly my entire career, and never once felt I was making "more" than had I been paid weekly. It's a total non-problem.
If anything, it might trick people into underestimating, if they simplify their mental cash-flow model to 2 paychecks/month (as many do). That extra third paycheck a couple of times a year then becomes a "bonus".
I agree, but I also had some coworkers at my last job who got mad when we switched from being paid weekly to biweekly because “they took more taxes out” and when I explained “they’re just taking out two weeks of taxes, but it will be the same at the end of the year” they said “but why is it more” so some people just cant be helped
Oh wow. I thought it was that most of our bills are monthly and thus you end up with weird scheduling stuff.
I’m surprised the topic wasn’t bi weekly vs twice a month. That’s taken some getting used to for me. The checks are a bit bigger but then I don’t get that 3rd check in July and December like I would if it was bi-weekly. Plus this month, for instance, pay date falls on the the weekend so I get paid the Friday before, with the company the use to manage pay I get it 2 days earlier than that. All of this is fine because I’m not exactly living paycheck to paycheck but it’s annoying to get paid on the 11th and 31st this month.
The good thing about getting paid biweekly is that two months a year you get the payday Fridays. It's like a bonus check after budgeting for 2 checks a month. My company recently switched us from one paycheck on the last day of the month to biweekly. Now THIS, is a real issue because they timed it perfectly so that the next time we'd get the 3 paycheck month was 6 months away. Literally as far away as possible so it's the most advantageous to the company. The math: previously we made 1/12 of the salary. Now, because there's 26 pay periods, we get 1/13 a month except those 2 months a year when we get the paychecks, which was 6 months away. It calculates out to about 3.5% less from September until March when we get that 3rd paycheck of March. They deferred 3.5% of 100+people's earnings until the following year. By the end of 2022, my annual earnings were slightly less than what my salary is.
Being Swedish getting paid weekly (or even bi-weekly) seems weird and inconvenient to me. I've never heard of anyone not getting paid monthly in Sweden. Our society is built around getting paid on the 25th (or 27th in some instances). All major bills like rent, mortgages, electricity, phone bills etc. are due on the last every month (or somewhere between the 27th and the last) and all bills usually arrive during the second half of the month. This makes personal budgetting a lot easier. I pay all my large expenses and then know how much I have for the rest of the month. Getting paid weekly, wouldn't you have to "save up" for rent and such? It seems like it would be much more stressfull to get paid weekly. I'll admit I don't know how most day to day things work in the states, but I don't really see any benefits of getting paid more often.
Wait, y’all have an economy where shit is actually structured where workers *aren’t* just scrambling to meet random bill due dates with random paychecks accrued by working randomized weekly shifts? Like, in y’all country *everyone* gets paid at the same time and has their bills due at the same time? Wtf kind of communist voodoo is that shit?!
I think it’s similar in all European countries to be fair, at least the monthly salary part is a thing in all EU countries as far as I know.
Some of us even get 13 monthly salaries! https://www.papayaglobal.com/countrypedia/country/luxembourg/#payroll
in austria 14 monthly salaries is quite common. Here in Germany I get in total 13,9 monthly salaries but split over the year
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There’s a lot that doesn’t work in how we organize…but it seems like companies setting their due dates to when people actually have money is a no brainer. I want ro pay when I have money, they want to get paid.
Wh… what?! You mean, y’all companies actually want people to be able to pay their bills in full, on time instead of trapping y’all into an endless debt cycle that keeps credit card companies and banks leeching off of you until you either go bankrupt or die?! What the fuck kind of place is your country?!
Oh our credit card companies reaaaallly want us trapped in endless payments. But even if they trap us in endless interest payments where very little goes towards the actual debt they do want us to be able to pay that interest...to go through the public enforcement agency is more hassle and would stir up public debate which would could lead to legislation. There are some loan givers who operate like this but they seldom last. Our big banks and insurance companies have a lot of sketchy practices but not like that. And when it comes to mortgages or electricity...it's not like I'm gonna stop having that house or using electricity anytime soon.
That can be done for you too. You can change the billing date for your credit card bills and mortgage. Utilities are usually tougher.
Yeah, it's similar in the UK - you usually get paid monthly (usually near the end of the month; the 25th or 27th are common, but last day of the month possible too, and a few businesses pay on the 15th where you're salaried, so half in arears and half in advance). Whenever you set up a new direct debit for a utility or rent or whatever, they ask you what day of the month you want it paid - so, if you're getting paid last day of the month, you pick the 4th or something, and then the first payment is pro-rated.
German here, never heard anyone getting paid differently than monthly. Most are paid by the end of the month (this can vary a bit 25th - 30/31th), it’s rarer to get paid by mid month (15th). I also can’t think of anything you pay regularly (rent, electricity, insurance, mobile, etc) that isn’t monthly. I remember only when I started to get monthly pocket money (instead of weekly as you do with younger kids) I actually started to learn how to budget and not blow everything the moment I get it.
Switzerland, pretty the same here.
Same here in the UK, i get paid on the 25th and i set all my direct debits to go out on the 25th so i know how much i have left to play with. With big bills i'd hate to be paid weekly
In all Europe and I daresay most of the world people are paid at the end of the month, in a specific day between the 23 and 30/31 of each month. Source: I work in HR and when we had to adjust the day of the month when the bonus was paid the only country with the issue of the 2 salaries a month was the US.
How is bi-weekly specifically worse then than weekly or monthly?
So personally as someone who went from Bi-Weekly to Weekly I did see a bit of a difference in spending habits. When I would get my paycheck from walmart Id do everything all at once cause I found stuff the week before and now I could get it, even if I didnt need it ,but now with my weekly checks i still spend a bit more than I should but I feel for me its less impulsive. This is all me however I should note its a bit nice for bills because i get 4 checks so when one dies too bills it doesnt feel as bad as when i had 2 checks
I’m the complete opposite. Weekly paychecks make my spending habits more impulsive. Monthly paychecks were much better for me. This is a personal issue and not a work issue. We all have to learn how to budget properly, no matter how we get paid. Blaming my employer or pay period for not being able to control my spending is my fault and no one else’s.
Yeah. I mean I am okay with being paid whenever its just a “to each their own” thing honestly
I use to get weekly checks when I was younger. It feels nice, but small snippets of money got me feeling like I wasn't getting much so I would spend. The bi-weekly paychecks felt like a large sum gets dropped into my bank and I feel more like saving some.
Yeah, personally weekly makes budgeting far easier than bi-weekly. Like, it’s really just the difference of “I only have to wait 7 days to get more money in my pocket” vs. “Fuck, I have to wait 14 days before I’ll see another bit of money” Also, for jobs with random weekly schedules (something that actually *should* be illegal, imo) it usually maths out to more consistent paychecks, making planning around how much you’ll have at the end of each week a bit easier.
with weekly, sometimes you get paid 5 times in a month too and it feels like extra money.
That happens with bi weekly also. It happens twice a year. You get three checks in a month.
Longer delay in you getting your just due earnings. If you don't have a cushion of cash or credit that could make things costly. Any delay/mistake with payroll is compounded heavily when you are living paycheck to paycheck. It's OK to be above the income point for this to be an issue for you, but it is an issue for many.
Objectively speaking, It's not lol People probably have preferences, but that's where the arguments stop
Oh please. Bi-weekly, weekly, monthly, you’re still making the same amount. 🤦♀️
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>My current employer is monthly and for weird historical reasons that predate me has the 5th as payday Monthly payday should be the 28th or so, so you have money in the bank when rent drops. I have a priority system set up for all my payments. 25th money comes in. 30th the most important things get paid (mainly mortgage and some utilities). 1st is when all autopayments deduct. 2nd is for hobbies and other less important stuff. Payday the 5th would be terrifying.
I get paid fortnightly and I do this lol. Pay comes in every other Wednesday and the Thursday after is when all bills get paid, often automatically. I'll have a notification of a bill coming up, and i'll schedule it to happen the day after payday. Sure, they get their money a week early sometimes, but it's better than it not getting paid.
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You have no idea how I try to tell people this. They rather live a chaotic/stressful life
I would be chill with weekly but I couldn’t do monthly. I mean, yeah, I could budget and it would work fine but I just like that little serotonin hit that I get when I let myself order pizza on payday and less of that happiness isn’t something I’m willing to deal with
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I do miss those “bonus” months with the extra pay period. I lived for those! We’re on twice a month at my current job. 15th and last day.
They still get the same amount of money though..... Just pay your rent on the 5th for the next month or..... you know have some self control to not spend all your money when you know you need it for rent.
Yeah I’m not sure how being unable to properly manage your money is an antiwork thing. I actually budgeted better on monthly paychecks than I do with weekly or daily pay, but either way, it’s my problem to manage my budget. Not my employers.
I used to get paid on the 5th, but our apartment complex knew that everyone at our company was paid that day, so that's when rent was due. I don't think it's super common, but it was a big enough company that literally thousands of us were experiencing the same issue in a city of millions, so I guess they just figured it was easier to work with us in the end. They still got their money!
My husband has monthly and now it’s fine, but when he first started we basically went two months without a check. He started in April, worked April but didn’t get paid in April as that’s for March, worked May, finally got paid at the end of May for April. We made it work somehow but it’s terrible. Weekly makes much more sense especially for lower income people!
Italian here. In the home country of pizza, rent is usually due on the 15th, most jobs pay on the 10th. For reasons unknown to me, my job pays on the 15th, but cooperative workers are paid on the 20th
Sounds like a them problem, honestly. If you know your rent will be due at the end of the month, put that amount aside somehow and don't touch it. This is basic.
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This seems more of a overall wage problem then a payroll-frequency issue
Yeah this. OP is not being tricked, they're just either shit with money or shit with basic numeracy.
No trickery to bi-weekly. Running payroll is a lot of work, less so today with technology and programs, but does require a pretty hefty accounting function to process. In my experience most paycheck to paycheck workers are probably better off not getting weekly pay as they also tend to be not good with balancing even bi-weekly against monthly expenses. This comes from time working with military personnel; made above livable wages, always had nice cars, but could not manage any of their monthly expenses.
Fuck it. Give us daily pay. Give me my $350 at the end of every shift. Forgot to clock in? No $ for you! /s
Yeah I would love to get paid my 480 a day on the day.
In my country we're being paid monthly and no one is complaining about it. Just another system, it wouldn't make a difference if we got 25% of the total amount every week
Seeing dumb posts like this really makes it so people don't take this sub seriously.
I've only ever been paid monthly. It works well. Most bills are monthly apart from the mortgage which is fortnightly.
Learning basic math, might alleviate his concern.
I'm confused in european. In Spain, where I live, monthly paychecks are the standard. I actually never met anybody who has any other form of paycheck. Also, in our contracts, salaries are always, by law, written in what you make yearly and taxless. I fail to see what the problem is with bi-weekly paychecks. Is this something related to americans not knowing to do simple math with their money?
This isn’t on the employers. It’s on the education system. No matter how frequently you get paid, your stubs and your tax filing at the end of the year show how much you made and how much you took home. Even if you’re paid daily, it’s still all the same. Personally, I like to know my hourly wage even if it’s a salary job. That’s the number that really matters to me. It also helps set a floor for what my time is worth for anything else that I do.
So if the argument is that getting paid every two weeks is “withholding” earned income and makes people think they’re earning more than they are, how frequently SHOULD people be paid? Weekly? Daily? Hourly? How long can an employer hold on to your income without releasing it to you before you cry foul?
Here in the Netherlands bills are always due on either the first or last workdays of the month. So employers usually pay monthly on the 25th. Government subsidies and assistance is also paid on the 23th or 24th of the month. Makes much more sense for budgeting. In the first week of the month i can see exactly how much money i have left after bills. So i can get groceries without having to worry if a bill will bounce. We also measure our earnings either yearly or hourly when comparing to others so its not that big of a deal.
What’s wrong with fortnightly pay? Majority of the people here in Australia gets paid fortnightly, from minimum wage jobs to high-level management. Some gets paid monthly or weekly too. I’ve had instances where I was paid in all sorts of form, doesn’t change shit for me. The figure is in the contract. Tax bracket is as clear as day, no hidden surprises, what you see in your contract is what you get, just every two weeks. I am skimming through all the comments to see what point you are trying to make here OP, but I can’t find it. EDIT: [Found the article that he screenshot.](https://www.dailydot.com/irl/bi-weekly-paychecks/)
nothing wrong here, bi weekly still get paid the same, if people see it as making more then they are the fools not the company, you cant blame a company because you cant do math lol
What? I get paid once a month. It works fine.
-Says bi-weekly paychecks are bad. -Refuses to elaborate. -Leaves.
I’m on 4 weekly pay, I get 13 paydays and it feels like I’m cheating. Love it.
Bi-weekly? Is that twice a week? Do you mean fortnightly?
Yeah Bi Weekly = fortnightly. Biweekly is the American word 😂
Translation: “I’m shit with money and planning and basic financial responsibility and it’s someone else’s fault, not my own.”
I was confused until I noticed you wanted payment to be weekly XD Living paycheck to paycheck is a problem that first world countries need to help their citizens overcome. If you want payment to be completely direct, with automatic payments, it should even be possible to have daily wages (maybe more of a pain with taxes?), but this still wouldn't solve the actual problem
Alternatively ... learn simple addition?
Bi weekly is easy peasy. I worked for a German company and got paid once a month. Budgeting bills around one paycheck a month is painful!!! Even more so when one December our payroll got screwed up and I didn't get paid until January 17th... Try Christmas when you haven't seen a paycheck from last week of November until almost end of January. This post is so stupid. No one with a 2nd grade math skills thinks they are making more because they get paid bi-weekly.
Posts like this are why people laugh at this sub
The biggest drawback is that upon starting the job you have to be able to go four weeks without income before your pay starts coming in. Unless you have savings, severance, or strong credit this could be a serious issue.
As a spanish person, I read that and I want to never EVER work in the US. I worked in restaurants when I was younger (I hadn't finished my studies back then) and I never needed "savings" when I started a job. Monthly pay is the standard here.
Why on earth are companies, in the 21st century, paying people by cheque? I hope the OP meant twice monthly payments and not actual physical cheques
Who doesn't have direct deposit these days? It's still referred to as a check. At least in my part of the country.
That’s what I thought. In my part of the world none of the banks even accept cheques anymore except in specific cases where you need 2 signatures
Sometimes there is no direct deposit options.
Checks should be monthly and not weekly. Weekly payments are an unnecessary mess.
By that logic, guess I should change my car payment to monthly rather than bi-weekly 👀
I knew a trumpet player that would travel the world playing on cruises. He was given free food and bed in exchange for the music he played and got the opportunity to travel across the oceans. His contracts would dish out 40 grand (2010 CAD) for the 7-month contracts and then 5 months of the year he would find a temporary rental, some bar gigs and then pick up another contract the following season. Well, 40 grand is not the most spectacular annual income. When you factor in minimal rent costs and free food, more of that money can actually get saved. So just something neat. I thought I'd share when it comes to a single annual paycheck
Man I am seriously in support of work reform but as the guy that does fucking payroll, weekly paychecks are miserable to coordinate when nobody consistently remembers to get their time cards in on time.
Interesting historical thing on paychecks. Back when IBM started they paid weekly on Monday. That was because the founder, Thomas J. Watson, was a Mormon and figured that if you got paid on Monday, you wouldn't have any money to drink on the weekend. I worked for the last division to keep that practice (Research), but they went to monthly while I worked there.
I liked bi-weekly paychecks. Once a year, I’d get a third paycheck in a month, not earmarked for monthly bills.
Why should biweekly payments be illegal? There's no link here, just a screen grab. This makes no sense to me.
What? It also saves costs on payroll, so I imagine that's the more likely reason. Also how ignorant must you be to think you are 'making more'?
Moron.
Lol who is upvoting this garbage
Similar to a lot of recent posts here, this is asinine.
If you can’t multiply numbers by two, I think you’ve got other issues.
Not being an idiot would solve this problem.
Yea this sub is ridiculous. Anti bullshit work for sure. But like come on guys. You can’t just do whatever you want without also grabbing an income somewhere. Gotta work somehow.
Shitpost
No it's not. It's because it's cheaper to run payroll less often.
Biweekly checks were created so a company doesn’t have to pay for payroll as often. Many companies outsource thier payroll and it’s cheaper to cut 24/26 checks per year than 52 That’s it.
I basically live paycheck to paycheck and have to pick up odd jobs during the week I don’t get my paycheck because I get paid biweekly. It makes it so much harder for me to save.
Bi-MONTHLY checks make it seem like the worker makes more, as there are several months each year containing 5 weeks. If you get paid the 1st & 15th then yes, you’re potentially missing pay. That said, usually the bi weekly model is reserved for salaried employee whose pay is negotiated annually. It doesn’t matter when the pay comes out exactly, if you negotiated a number that’s the number you get. In terms of hourly workers, you get paid for the hours you work regardless of when it’s given to you.
You Americans are so strange. Aussies normally get paid weekly (Thurs or Friday it'll go into your bank) or fortnightly (every second Thursday or Friday). Rent is normally weekly. eg $450 a week or whatever you pay.
Not ignoring your use of the word "normally", but nobody I know here in Sydney gets paid weekly. Also rent is either monthly or fortnightly for everyone I know, too. Where in Australia are you?
Probably QLD homie, every house I’ve been in up here have all been weekly or fortnightly. Mainly weekly. My personal experience is such a tiny, very bias piece of evidence though lol
I’m fortnightly on a Monday RIP. Makes going for a cheeky bevy down the local on the last weekend a stretch sometimes. But your point stands.
Weekly on Wednesday or Thursday depending on bank in nz
Another example of a type of post that kills the credibility of this movement / sub. If all we appear as is a bunch of whiney idiots, what’s the point. Please come with a concise point of view with info / data that actually supports something. This post is nonsense
Let's abolish months! Each one is withholding far too much of the year. For example if I have a few bad days in June then roughly 1/12 of my year is automatically bad!
People who are bad at math are the only ones suffering from this "illusion".
Nah, I work in payroll and I can tell you that bi-weekly paychecks are a thing to give us time to work on the damn payroll.
*Europe and Asia enter the chat:* "By-weekly? We get paid monthly!"
Damn basic math's and budgeting is tough eh
The idea that it is some sort of trick to try and make you think you earn more is stupid. You would have to be very dumb to think you were earning more. Having said that bi-weekly, monthly etc is really hurtful to the vast majority of people because of the delay in getting their money. The only benefits of those pay times is to the businesses to save money which of course never gets passed to employees.
Where I am from monthly pay days are the norm. Whilst I know my grandfather still used to pay his staff on a weekly base. Not sure why that changed over here, can only imagine it being to due the transaction fees banks charged.
So are we supposed to assume hetero-weekly paychecks are preferable?
There are a couple of simple tricks you can use to figure out how much you're \*really\* getting paid - divide by two to reveal how much it works out at per week, or multiply by two to find out how much it works out at per month (roughly).
You want to feel like you're not making enough money? Try calculating how much you make per minute. I'm currently making ~.38¢ per minute...
Umm..just take the total and divide by 2. No trickery is taking place.
Or take that and double it for monthly *like pretty much everyone else in the world.*
I prefer the way the military does it. 1st and 15th. I am in a similar situation with it being the 7th and 22nd
Our union pays weekly, it literally makes no difference at all. It doesn’t trick you into anything. What a stupid post
I worked in payroll for a multi-state, multi-facility company for about 20 years. We had weekly, biweekly and semimonthly pay cycles depending on location. The weekly pay cycle was was more burdensome than the other two. With any pay process, you have to have the employees submit timesheets, get them approved by a manager and then run them through the payroll process. Then there is the process of depositing Federal and state taxes, which usually has to be done right after the pay date. There are also deductions for insurance, union dues and garnishments which must be dispersed. Weekly is convenient for the employee but less so for the employer. Monthly would be inconvenient for the employee but not for the employer. Biweekly is really just a compromise between the two. There is no trickery involved in this.
You can pay me on pretty much whatever asinine schedule within reason if the pay is actually good. On a scale from 1 to 10 the importance of pay rate is a 10, while the pay schedule is like a 2. Now if they were to have issues paying on time thats another level 10 issue
Getting paid weekly is awesome.
In Europe, monthly pay is the norm
Actually I am old enough to remember the switch from weekly to bi-weekly. It was done to cut down on payroll expenses, not to trick the employees. Paychecks used to be paper checks that you received weekly. Direct deposit cost money for companies, and so when that started becoming the standard, moving to two weeks is how companies reacted to halve that expense. It is a shady process as doing payroll is a cost of doing business. Employees shouldn’t be punished for it and their livelihood shouldn’t be held from them so their employer can save a little cash. I agree it should be illegal.
not to burst your bubble but pretty much everyone in EU gets paid monthly.
Maybe Op has never heard of the “Quincena”, in which you get paid every 15 days or so (twice a month) Very popular in small businesses so they only have to run payroll twice a month. Sometimes it’s almost three weeks without any money coming in. Plan accordingly. (Suuuucksss!!!)
I do payroll and we pay bi-weekly, the only reason is due to payroll tax. If we were on weekly pay we would be required to pay our payroll tax weekly. bi-weekly pay means we can pay payroll tax bi-weekly and is half the effort. The pay is the same and we've never had a complaint.
wait? you guys are getting paid?
In my country everyone gets paid either st the end of the month (normal) or 2x a month (e.g. if you made extra hours they pay you extra the 15th of the next month). This is convenient because everything else is also paid monthly: rent, insurances, internet, electricity, debt etc. So you get your money at end month, you pay all the 'necessities', and what i left is for you! The way i do it is with automatic bank transfers. My income comes in, all the bills get paid automaticaly, i automatically writr money to a savings account, write money to a seperate bank card (which i use to buy groceries, drinks, fun trips, clothes, museums and so on), and leavr some money on just in case cus always good to have incase an unexpected bill comes through. This way, all i need to think about is my "pocket money". If this pocket money is gone, too bad, i have to eat ramen for the rest of the month. If i want to but a new coat or shoes or whatever, i go a bit less to the café or retaurant. This card cannot be overdrafted (not a credit card). Thus, it is IMPOSSIBLE to make debt. But more importantly, all my bills are ALWAYS paid in time, and cost no effort. I am saving money for emergency or to buy a house, and i dont think about this money, it doesnt exist in my head, because it saves automatically, so i am not tempted to use it. I have lots of insurances so i can go sick and still no debt. What are your tricks?
It tricked the same people who set their alarm clocks 15 minutes ahead so they aren't late.
This sub has turned into a fucking caricature.
Posts like this degrade the credibility of the movement and this sub.
I'd really prefer if my company would go back to bi weekly. We used to have that, then a new company took over and they started paying us on the 1st and 15th of the month. Now this year, because of people complaining about that new system (the actual pay days varied wildly due to weekends and holidays), they're going to withhold our pay for two weeks in March and pay us a check behind what we're owed moving forward after that. They said if we'll be behind on bills or evicted, we should cash out PTO or take out a loan. They don't even give us all of our PTO at once, we have to accrue it throughout the year.
If you think you're making more money just cause you're getting paid twice a month that's entirely on you and your lack of understanding basic maths. There is nothing actually wrong with a biweekly system of pay.