Managing Four Weekly Pension

DaisyAnne, fyi - no, I'm not rich and I didn't spend a lifetime teaching (just 15 years). I have funds for Christmas, only because, on an everyday level, I'm incredibly mean and miserly. My kids would say I'm obsessed with watching the pennies!

We don't do big presents for adults - so it's eight grandchildren and dinner for 15 this year. We do a silly Secret Santa with Elfster (just for a laugh) with a strict limit of £15. At the moment I'm agonising about Christmas crackers. They seem to be in packs of 6 or 8. I don't like the cheap ones - but truly resent the cost of anything half decent!

On my list for next year's sewing makes Hetty- reusable Christmas Crackers. Mind you I have been meaning to get round to them for this year, but that ship has sailed. They do look very nice though and can be used year after year.

I wouldn't say we are miserly, but we are very sensible when it comes to presents

Long before the days of spreadsheets and internet banking my mother was absolute rubbish at budgeting monthly with the money I gave her for my "keep". I did offer to give it to her weekly but she insisted on having a lump sum. Then by the third week of the month she would have nothing left and be trying to cadge some from me. She always promised to pay it back when she got my fathers wage on a friday but never did. So I deducted it from the next months payment thinking it would teach her to budget more carefully. It never did.

I used to draw my salary from the bank and divide it into 4 to cover me for the 4 weeks. I kept it in my lingerie drawer. One day £2 went missing - £1 from each bundle. The same week my sister turned up with new togs for school. When I aske dif anyone had been in my drawer my mother told me I "must have miscounted". I always suspected her of having taken it. It was not the first time I had missed money but it was usually silver.

Thereafter I kept the money in my grandmothers house and nothing ever went missing from there.

I was able to move some of my larger debits to coincide with my monthly work pension payments which are always on the same date every month. I keep an online diary of when every single payment is due in and out (rather more payments out rather than in, unfortunately!) and check it and my online bank account daily. I also find it handy to have a little saved in an instant access saver account from the same bank so I can easily transfer a small amount if needed.

I wouldn’t know a spreadsheet if it jumped up and bit me, but having done book-keeping at college in the ‘70’s, I still keep a 3 column ledger! I always know what I have, or what I need to have to the last penny.

My daughter has mental health issues and lives on Universal Credit. She never seems to know when the next payment is due, they seem to be every six weeks "or so" and this makes it difficult to budget. She aims for what she thinks will be the payday and often it seems to be due the next week.

A simple way is to multiply your 4weekly pension by three and then divide by thirteen. This will give you your weekly amount for the quarter. Best wishes.

Whitewavemark2

I know almost to the last Penny how much I’m going to spend each month for at least a year ahead.

I have a budget app on my I-pad and it is brilliant.

You can then use it to enter the dates of your pension - it gives you options of monthly or four weekly or whatever. You can then enter all you weekly/monthly/yearly expenses. Every entry has the option of “recurring” and a option to set a date limit.

You will be in total control.

Ive been using Account Tracker Pro for several years now and find it brilliant for keeping track of direct debits, pension payments and savings. You can download it free to your iPad from the AppStore. I also find it useful for reconciling bank statements and generally keeping track of everything financially.
Once downloaded it may take a while to set up all your information but you only have to do that once and then it’s just a matter of updating.
Hope you find this useful.

What a helpful response notgran

Thank you Whitbygal. That looks worth looking at and passing on.

One of my brother's dogs is called Whitby. We are all very fond of the town. Your name did make me wonder what the weather was like there though

Spreadsheet

I added up my monthly direct debits, added £50 contingency for variable payments are + 1/4 tv licence and ring fenced that leaving remainder for everyday living. I’ve recently taken advantage of offers for switching bank and opened another account paying higher interest and cash back on all my debit card purchases. I get money into the first account and pay dd from there and transfer spending money to 2nd account to take advantage of interest and cash back. I’m in the process of changing 1st account again to get £200 ‘reward’

I have a seperate account from which I pay my household bills. When I first retired I looked at annual bill sum from previous year. Added 10% Then divided that into 12. So thats what I NEEDED to have by the end of a month in account. I started with a balence of a couple of weeks worth from my savings and my pension gets paid in each week. As time has gone on the extra from the 13th of the 4 weekly payment within the year has accrued and has been useful for unanticipated rises and extra bills and now exceeds the 2 week buffer I had at the start. Of course year on year the amount of money needed has increased dramatically but each year so far I have remained in the black and have a buffer that looks ok enough to take some out for a wee treat so I am happy with that. No spreadsheet here though . We work we on pen and paper🤣🤣

When we moved house six years ago, I kept a strict account of our outgoings and income for the whole year - then at the beginning of the next year I made out a budget based on all the things that had been paid each month of our first year here.

Insurance policies, union dues, telephone bills, tv licence, untility bills, water rates, house tax etc. and added an estimate of what dentist's, vet's and optician's bills might amount to in the course of a year.

Once I had recovered from the shock of how much money all this amount to on an annual basis, I divided the total by 12, thus finding the amount that had to be in the account the bills were paid from ever y month.

I then handed the entire budget to my bank manager and asked him to check my arithmetic, having noted down on the paper I gave him, which bills are paid monthly, which quaurterly and which bi-annually.

He suggested a slightly larger amount than I had reached, and we opened an account that is only used for paying bills either by direct debit or by my paying them myself over our Internet banking account, and transferred the amount he had suggested into it each month when my pension is paid into my current account.

This way we were over the nagging insecurity of wondering if there actually was enough in the account for those months of the year where there are most bills to pay.

It also got me of the hook of the problem that is bothering you - a pension paid out at one interval and bills rendered for differing periods.

For the past six years, this system has worked well and it has certainly saved me a lot of worrying and juggling of bills and the order to pay them in.

By having this account that the bills are paid from, and a current account, what is left in my current account after the monthly amount has been transferred on the last day of the month, when my pension is paid into my current account to the other account, I know with certainty that what is in my current account on the first banking day of each month is money that can be spent on food and other housekeeping expenses, although I do try to leave a some money in that account every month, so there is a buffer for any unforseen expenses.

I hope this answers some of your queries. And that my explanation is not to confusing.

Ps I forgot to say we also allocate from our pensions a seperate sum for food and for fun too and have a budget for gifts and holidays now those are the ones we find take all sorts of juggling 🤣🤣

We opened a 'household account' nearly 50 years ago. We both pay a monthly sum into it and all the regular bills go out, usually through direct debits. As grandetante says, taking the regular bills out, plus having the transfer of funds date close to the day the money goes in, means that it is easy to see what is left for day to day necessities like food, house and garden care, clothes, etc.

It would be really helpful if the government could ease this problem by paying pensions monthly.

That would make life so much simpler humptydumpty!

When I was paid 4 weekly I used to add up the years bills the transfer 1/10th to a ‘Bills Account’ every payday.
It meant I had a nice little contingency fund with which to pay for Christmas.
The key thing was the separate account which was only used for bills. You could probably automate the transfer every four weeks these days and using the banking app on your phone will make it easier to manage.
Good luck however you decide to manage your money 😊

How would additional bank accounts help?

Are you really living hand-to-mouth? I know we like to moan, but most of us aren't really! Or are you one of those people who, if there's money in their current account, can't resist spending it?

I have all my direct debits going out on the 1st of the month. It would be really helpful if my state pension could be paid on the last working day of the previous month the same as my work pension is. Then it could all look after itself and I wouldn't have to keep moving money from my current account to my savings account and back again to earn a little bit of interest.

I have to spend time juggling money between accounts, especially when the date of the 4 weekly payment comes in the middle of the month. I have 2 current accounts, one having been opened as a savings account as it pays interest and is with the same bank as my other savings. My pensions all go into one account, but I have to move £1000 to the other each month to fulfil the terms and conditions. When the 4 weekly payment falls at a different time I have to do the transfers in stages. It can be a bit of a pain some months but it is just about keeping on top of the dates. I write the date of the state pension payment in my diary so I know when to log onto online banking and move my money across. It was easy this month as the extra winter fuel payment went in this week and saved me moving money in stages. Happy days!