u/Silly_Atmosphere332

I got paid every 4 weeks for years and never understood why my budget kept drifting. Turns out the maths was never going to work.

52 weeks divided by 4 is 13. So you get 13 pay packets a year, not 12. Every "monthly" budget template assumes 12. That means one month a year you get paid twice and it feels like a windfall, and every other month you're quietly a bit short, because your bills are monthly and your money isn't.

Fortnightly is the same problem in a different shape. 26 payments a year, so twice a year you get a third payday in a month. Weekly, you get four months a year with five pay weeks in them.

The other one that got me, and it's worth 30 seconds of anyone's time whether you budget or not: council tax is billed over 10 months by default in England and Wales, so February and March are free. That's not a discount, it's just how they've split it. You can ask your council to spread it over 12 instead, which drops the monthly amount by about a sixth. Same total, cash flow only, but if your problem is that every month is tight rather than that the year is tight, it genuinely helps. Takes one phone call or a form on their website.

What fixed it for me was budgeting by payday instead of by month. So it isn't "January", it's "pay packet 1, pay packet 2". Every payday you give every pound a job until you hit zero and the calendar stops mattering. Sinking funds do the rest, so the annual stuff like car insurance and the MOT gets a monthly set aside instead of ambushing you.

Two things that made the biggest difference once I'd switched:

• Carryover. Whatever's left in the account on payday needs its own box, otherwise last month's leftovers get mistaken for this month's money and you overspend on paper money you already spent.
• Percentages, not amounts. Splitting the bills into essentials, living costs and fun as a % of take home told me more in five minutes than a year of tracking totals did.

Anyone on 4 weekly pay? I've never met anyone who found a template that handles it properly.

Just launched this one so feeling brave and sharing it. It's a UK budget planner built around how you actually get paid, weekly, fortnightly, 4-weekly or monthly, instead of being a US template with the dollar sign swapped out. Proper UK lines in it too, council tax spread over 10 months, sinking funds for stuff like the MOT and Christmas, student loan sorted by plan.

Comes in both Excel and Google Sheets, instant download.

Launch code LAUNCH30 gets you 30% off for the next couple of days: https://sortedbysundaygb.etsy.com

Its my first listing in a brand new shop so any feedback is genuinely welcome.

This started because every budget template I could find just assumes you get paid monthly. I'm not, I'm paid every 4 weeks, and me and my partner are on different pay dates aswell, so the normal monthly ones never really added up for us. So I ended up making my own, and if im honest I went a bit overboard with it.

Some of the stuff it does:

• you pick your pay cycle from a dropdown (weekly, fortnightly, 4-weekly or monthly) and it turns everything into a monthly figure, so it still balances no matter how your paid
• sinking funds where you just put in how often something happens (car insurance once a year, MOT once, that kind of thing) and it works out what to set aside each month for you
• an annual tab that pulls from a monthly log so you're not retyping everything, plus a little net worth bit that adds up pensions and ISAs
• the lines go red when you're over and green when you're under, which is weirdly satisfying
• the UK stuff most templates skip, council tax over 10 months, metered/unmetered water, student loan as a payroll deduction by plan, childcare with the tax-free top up

The annoying part was getting the pay cycle maths to actually behave, took me a good few goes. Happy to explain how I did it if anyone's into that sort of thing.

Anyway I've stuck it on Etsy if anyone wants the finished one (it's in Excel and google sheets, theres a code LAUNCH30 for 30% off for the next couple of days). https://sortedbysundaygb.etsy.com?coupon=LAUNCH30. But genuinely happy to just answer spreadsheet questions too.