The pre-payday pinch: how to manage your finances

Are you skint? Is payday merely a blip in the month, a day where you make your minimum credit card repayment, settle the mortgage, buy groceries and keep you fingers crossed that you’ll survive another few weeks? If this sounds familiar, then you’re not alone. New research from Money Advice Service has found that one in eight workers run out of their monthly wages within ten days of being paid. What’s more, a third of all employees struggle to make their money last most months — equivalent to 10.4 million working people nationwide. Dubbed the ‘pre-payday pinch’, this isn’t a modern phenomenon. But that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant. Counting the hours until payday is never fun, particularly if those hours run into weeks. So, what are people doing to stay afloat? Not surprisingly, many are reaching for the plastic. Money Advice Service’s survey, conducted by Opinium, shows more than a quarter of those stretched for cash rely on credit or store cards.