this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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The killer is volatility—irregular hours + fixed bills = constant crisis mode.
This is killing me in a different way.
Weekly pay for monthly bills.
Most of my bills land between the 10th and 20th of the month, which means I have to set aside and reserve money from my other paycheques to cover that range.
I am bad at doing so.
Open an account for rent and other known monthly expenses put 25% of that total from each check(or 50% if paid 2x a month). For utilities that are variable use an average of the 5 highest bills you gotten for each account. direct deposit some amount into a account for emergency savings. And the rest to your main account. NEVER steal from your bills account. You can add an amount for fun money as well.
That would be a great idea if I had any discernable savings. I expect I need at least half a month of money in my bills account to balance everything out, for those weeks that I am paid less than what I need to pay for bills.
That's the point of setting up the bills account. If you deposit directly to it each check the amount you need based on how many checks you get. You won't have to worry about finding your bills money when they are due and you'll know how much you have to spend on other stuff because bills are already accounted for. If paid weekly put 25% of your total bills(rent, phone, Internet, gas, electric water ect.). For easy math let's say total bills are $1600 a month you'd but $400 each pay check into the account ideally using direct deposit so it's automatic. If paid every 2 weeks $800 a check. For usage based bills (water electric ect put enough for worst case bills in each month) over time you'll build up extra money but leave it alone until you have at least 3 months extra in the account ( it could save your ass some day).
Let's say your take home is $580 a week $400 to bill which leaves you with $180 a week for food and gas and fun. Seems pretty shitty and I'd recommend finding a cheaper place to live or get a roommate if possible in this scenario but at least you can clearly see how much you can actually spend while your bills are already accounted for. Is still recommend taking another $30 out leaving $150 for food and gas and put it directly into a savings account. Or split it $20(emergency fund) $10(fun stuff).
Don't buy fun stuff (games, drugs, alcohol, movies, eating out) unless you can cover it from fun stuff account.
Emergency fund is for car repairs medical bills loss of income not a new TV or vacation.
If you get a raise 90% of the new take home should go to 80/20 split emergency/ fun stuff. If you can get at least 3 months of income (6 months would be better) saved in your emergency fund you can re-allocate some of it to food /gas day to day account and fun stuff account but only do that if you need to save your sanity, because in my experience every time you feel like you're making progress some big bill will come along and wipe it out.
This all sounds great until you realize that you need time to run up to this, or a modicum of savings in order to make it happen.
Your numbers are optimistic at best. My bills vary and they're more than 70% of my income (roughly).
It's more efficient to deposit my money into a bill payment account, then take out what I can spend from that.
Guess what I already do?
Guess how much "spend" I have, per week, that needs to cover all of my gas, food, and everything else? I'm not even saving a dollar, and my available money per week is around $200.
That seems great until you realize that I'm Canadian and it's Canadian dollars, and $200 CAD is around $150 USD.
I'm employed, full time, in a specialized field, and I can spend $100 USD a week on food because I need the extra $50 for incidentals and gas.
I don't need a budget. I have a budget. I need a raise.
If you can afford $9/mo, YNAB (You Need A Budget) is a great app for managing income and expenses that don't necessarily align on a calendar schedule.
I get that budgeting won't make up for insufficient income, but if it's actually the financial habits that are holding you back, this app works wonders for learning how to properly plan your expenses.
If you're into open source stuff and are willing to spend more effort tinkering, ActualBudget is the same concept, but lacks some QoL features (notably, auto-importing transactions from your bank/credit card statements).
I'm a big fan of a budgeting software called "budget with buckets".
It's the same envelope/bucket budgeting method as YNAB, except it only runs on your machine so you have greater privacy. It comes with an unlimited, untimed free trial, since it often can take months to decide if a budgeting software works for you. I used it for maybe a year without paying. If you do pay, it's a one-time payment.
It supports account syncing for a pittance - I think it was $15/year.