You’ve been celebrating your three-paycheck month like it’s a financial bonus, but I’m here to tell you, that third paycheck? It’s not extra money. It’s fake math in action.
In this episode of Money Files, I help you shift your mindset and your money systems so you can stop overspending and start building financial peace. I walk you through the exact budgeting strategy I use with clients during three-paycheck months, my simple Three Money Bucket System and how it helps high earners stop leaking money and start getting ahead.
You’ll learn why this third paycheck is the perfect opportunity to build a buffer, pay annual subscriptions, and get out of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle for good.
If you’ve ever wondered, “Where did my money go?” after a month with a little more income, this episode is for you.
Listen in to learn:
[01:11] Why your third paycheck isn’t actually “extra”
[06:08] The trap of fake math and how to avoid it
[09:02] How to apply the Three Money Bucket System in a 3-paycheck month
[13:44] The real way to build a buffer and automate peace
[18:03] Why predictability not spontaneity creates financial ease
Tune in now to learn how to treat every paycheck with intention and finally stop letting fake math run your finances.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
If this episode shifted the way you think about your third paycheck, go listen to Episode 127: Optimize Your Earnings: What To Do When You Have Extra Money in Your Paycheck. It’s the perfect next step to help you create a plan for your income instead of letting “extra” money slip through the cracks.
Transcript for “Turn Your 3rd Paycheck Into a Financial Power Move”
Intro: Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. I think this episode is going to catch a lot of you at just the right time. So something that I know for a lot of people is that August in 2025 is a three paycheck month. You have already told your brain, you’ve told your friends, you’ve told some trip deposits. This month is a three paycheck month. I can do X. You are celebrating. But guess what? It does not matter that you have a three paycheck month and if you are talking to yourself about having a three paycheck month, I know that you are an offender of fake maths like you are giving your money away and it’s not your money to give. That third paycheck is not extra money. Repeat after me. My third paycheck is not extra money. You have to shift that thinking.
That shift in thinking is going to help you have more money in your bank account. I’m going to say it again, that shift in thinking is going to help you have more money in your bank account because your third paycheck is not extra money. And I get it. It can feel like no Keina, you don’t understand. I’ve already paid everything. I already had two paychecks this month and I’ll already have paid everything. And so that paycheck is extra. But here’s where the fake math creeps in because that’s not actually true. In a five paycheck month, what is generally also true is that you have five weeks of living that month. You think about your expenses that are day to day that don’t have anything to do with a bill. If you have a child, you have daycare, that still has to be paid. If you have a car, you still got to put gas in your car.
If you have a belly, you still are going to want to eat. And so that extra paycheck isn’t extra, they just took the money that they owe you for the year and they’re just breaking it down in a different cycle. And so that money is not truly extra. And so just be on to yourself, if you are catching yourself saying, Ooh, I have extra money because I’m going to say it again, it’s not extra. And it makes sense that your brain wants to call it extra because it feels like a win for you. You’re going to have another sensation in your account where there’s more money that’s put in because you like the sensation of a payday. When payday hits your bank account goes up and you enjoy that.
Well, what I want you to know is that the same brain that says that this is extra money is also the same brain that is saying, I’ll start budgeting next month. I’ll figure it out when things calm down. I’ll make up for it later. Because you are someone who just does fake math in your life. And so your third paycheck is actually a really great time for you to disrupt your money systems. It’s a perfect time for you to actually start implementing money systems. So I just want to show you a little bit of real math for a moment. If you are paid biweekly, so if you’re paid biweekly, that’s the reason you have three paycheck months. So you get paid 26 paychecks a year and most months you get two checks. And then twice a year you get three checks. And I tell my clients that whenever they’re paid biweekly, what we do is we build their budget off of, we take one of their paychecks, we multiply it by two, and that’s how we set their monthly budget up because we don’t always know when the third paycheck is going to fall.
We plan for the whole year based off the third paycheck, but it’s planned in the fact that I want you to just take one paycheck and multiply it by two. So you do that and then that will allow you to actually create a budget that follows that three money bucket system where we can think about our expenses as spending. We can think about our expenses through the lens of bills, and we can think about our spending through the lens of savings. And so when my clients are doing the simple system and they’re implementing the three money bucket system, what happens is when that third paycheck month hits, it does the same thing as all their other paychecks does. Like some goes to spending, some goes to bills and some goes to saving.
When you have that level of clarity, you can also see that third paycheck isn’t really extra because you still have spending that’s going to go on, you still want to be able to save because it’s going to help you hit your goals, whether it’s an emergency fund goal, vacation, Christmas, and then in terms of that money going to fund bills, it helps you start to bill in a buffer into your account. It helps you start to automate subscriptions and automate utilities and be able to automate things in your bills account and be able to feel like I have so much peace about people coming into my bank account and grabbing their money and my account not going to zero.
So that’s what a three paycheck month can allow you to do it. It allows you to create space, but it also allows you to still have money for your day-to-day spending that you need to take care of, or even bills that are more reflective of weekly practices, whether it’s lawn care, daycare, getting your car washed. And so that’s going to make sure that those things are funded because you are still doing the same thing with that third paycheck. If you’re someone who is in that third paycheck cycle and maybe you don’t have a budget, my recommendation for you is like, this is actually a really, when you’re in that third paycheck month, this is a really great time for you to actually start budgeting.
My favorite time to onboard a client is when I’m like, oh my goodness, it’s going into the three paycheck month and I know that their excitement is not the reason that I’m excited. But my excitement is I know that we are going to create cash flow in their account quicker because we have more cash flow coming in that month, and because we have more cash flow coming in that month, I can help them identify like, okay, what are some of the things that maybe are past due that I want to get caught up on? Or maybe there are some subscriptions that I would like to pay annually so I could pay them annually so they’re a little bit cheaper month to month. And there’s just so many creative things that I get to do as a financial coach to get people ahead during their three paycheck month and to make them feel like they have this magical money system that just always takes care of them.
So if you are in a space where you are looking at a three paycheck month, I want you to be thinking like, how can I actually use these three paychecks to get myself ahead? That’s a different question than maybe you’ve asked yourself in the past. In the past you probably said, I have this extra paycheck, like what flight can I buy? Or what card can I pay off? I want you to actually pause on those things. I want you to be thinking about how can I start funding the next part of my bills? Like if you think about all your bills for the month and you wanted to set half of that aside, what would that look like? If you think about, what you have left over of that, what do you actually need before you get paid the next two weeks or in the next two weeks, like what do you need to spend? And then put the rest towards savings and then the next time you get paid, do the same thing.
Creating that level of predictability is going to get you out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle. And then the next time you have a three paycheck month, you’re going to see, oh my goodness, this woman Keina, she was right, like I’ve started to build a buffer in my account. I’m seeing that I’m no longer focused on whether or not today is a payday or not. And so you’re going to create this level of predictability. So be onto yourself, if you are talking to yourself about having a three paycheck month. If you’re starting to talk about like, Ooh, what can I spend it on? I want you to pause yourself. I need you to take a breath.
One of my clients who’s a yogi, I tell her, I’m like, I need you to take a money child pose before you go and spend and ask yourself, would I be making the same decision if it was my first paycheck of the month or my second paycheck of the month? And if you wouldn’t make the same decision, then you can really be onto yourself that you are in this cycle of fake math. And my goal for you as a financial coach is that you treat your paycheck the same every single time you get paid. Because when you do the same thing with your money, your money is going to start taking care of you. And you want to have a bank account that takes care of you. And the way that you’re going to get that bank account that takes care of you is by you taking care of your money and doing the same thing with your money, months to months.
So just think about how you’ve mentally probably already spent that paycheck, and I would invite you to pause, take that money child’s pose and to really be intimate with what are the expenses that I pay every single month? What does my spending look like? What does my savings look like? You can actually download my spending plan template, and you don’t just have to hold these things in your head, but you can actually write your numbers down. You can use my zero based budgeting template and you can start doing the same thing with your money every single month. And you can use this three paycheck month to actually get ahead.
If you’re like, Keina, I already spent the other paycheck. You can still use these next two paychecks to get yourself ahead and really put yourself in that state of mind because guess what? You are going to have another three paycheck month. And you know it’s not going to happen probably until 2026 if you’ve already had one this year. But you’ll have already created the plan. And the plan is the most important part. It’s not about whether or not you’re getting it right. That’s not the most important part. So if you don’t have a system yet, a three money bucket system, or maybe you have one and you just feel like it’s not working for you, I’ll invite you to apply to work with me.
Right now, you’re probably trying to hold all of your financial life in your head. You’re juggling apps, you’ve declared that you don’t know how to do math. Maybe you have some spreadsheets that have dust on them. Maybe you have a old notebook with a list or an envelope with a list of bills. I want you to apply to work with me because my work isn’t just another. What you actually need is like a real plan that matches how you want to spend money in your life. And I’m not only going to help you create a system, whether you’re paid once a month, whether you’re paid every week, whether you get the same amount all the time, or don’t get the same amount all the time. I’m going to help you create a system that allows you to manage your money simply and with ease.
That’s done in my five month coaching partnership. And we will literally budget every single paycheck and I’ll tell you exactly what to do with your money. Whether it’s, Keina, I have all these bills coming up, I don’t know how I’m going to get them paid. We will budget all of that and I’ll help you in our first call, create a budget and get your system set up so then that way we can actually start to plan towards some of the dreams that you have, whether it’s paying down debt or you want to save for the down payment on a home, or maybe you’re getting ready to be married and you want to be on the same page as your partner. So apply to work with me in my five month coaching partnership. You can either go to my website or you can go to the show notes and you can apply to work with me there. Thank you so much for tuning in and talk to you later.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
