Two Installments

The government announced recently that civil servants' salary will be paid in two installments, the 1st in the middle of the month and the other at the end of the month. This has been the practice in the US for I don't know how long, and perhaps in other countries too. When I was working there part-time my salary was paid that way. So when I heard Pak Lah made the announcement I was quite happy. It gives me some sense of security knowing that money will be coming into my account every two weeks. Then I won't have to worry about how I will survive financially in the next 3 weeks after 2/3 of the salary is gone within the first week of the month.

Nevertheless, I think it will create problems too. One of it is that if you have a lot of payments to make such as loans and other bills probably the first half of the salary will not be sufficient to pay all of them. Thus, you have to divide your bills into two groups, meaning also that you need to make a trip to the bank or other bill paying places twice. This could also mean for some people that you may be charged interest or have a bad credit history if you're late in your payments, especially if the due dates are at the same time. Perhaps the utilitiy companies and banks need to reconsider the due dates they set.

Another problem I see has to do with self-discipline, rational and pratical thinking. Some people might spend the entire first half of the money at once or on unnecessary things with the excuse, "Alah, takpe, 2 minggu lagi duit masuk. Duit tu kita guna bayar bill."

Of course they are other problems too, notwithstanding there are also other advantages.

Whatever it is, we need to have a planned budget every month (which sometimes could be very hard to adhere to)