throwaway-ish story, figured this sub would get it so my wife and i get paid biweekly and for years we tried to do the whole monthly budget thing and it just never clicked. like the math technically works but in real life you'd hit the second friday of the month and have no idea if you were ok or screwed. the bills don't care about calendar months. what actually worked was stupid simple. every paycheck: write down what came in, subtract the bills that hit before the next check, and whatever's left over, keep $200 of it sitting there and throw the rest at savings. that's the whole thing. no categories. i don't care what we spent on groceries vs gas, i just need to know friday's number. i built it into a spreadsheet because i'm that guy. 26 rows, one per paycheck. it does the math, tells you if a check's gonna be tight, there's a bill tracker so you stop forgetting the water bill. been running our entire family budget on it for over a year now. daycare's $320 a week so trust me it gets a workout lol. i put a cleaned up version on gumroad for $19. link's in my profile if anyone wants it. honestly the spreadsheet's not the point, the per-paycheck thing is what changed it for us. anyway. that's my side project. roast me if the formulas are ugly, i know at least one of them is   submitted by   /u/Ropaher [link]   [comments]