Are You Getting Extra Paychecks?

Some of you are probably getting extra paychecks and don’t even realize it. Ok, they really aren’t “extra” but…well, just read on.

I get paid bi-weekly, which comes out to 26 times per year. But I track our money by the month, or by a 4-week period, which means I only need 24 paychecks to work our plan. That gives me two extra paychecks per year to work with.

Before I started tracking our money, I knew there were 26 pay periods but I never paid attention. Just some months it seemed that I had more money than before but I never did anything different. I just thought, “Wow. Extra money. That’s cool.” And eventually it would spend it on who knows what. Now that I’m tracking our money and every dollar is accounted for, I think, “THIS IS LIKE FREE MONEY!”

Right now I have an extra paycheck sitting in my checking account. Of course this will all go toward one of our debts – either toward my car or toward Three's saxophone. (We have been paying for the sax by the month until we were sure he was going to stick with it.)