The issue
Earlier this month I left a comment under a post about resentment in business. One line from it has stayed with me since.
"The business grew, the team got raises, the suppliers got paid, and the owner's pay is still where it was three years ago."
Look at the dates in it.
Payroll goes out on the same day every month. Suppliers have terms. Raises land at review time. Every payment in that sentence is booked in advance, except one.
The owner's pay waits for whatever is left.
The case before us
Should you pay yourself first or last each month? Leave the question open and the month answers it for you.
A bill with a date gets paid on its date. A payment with no date waits until the dated ones have cleared. The owner's pay is that payment. It never got a date of its own.
The claim: give your pay a fixed date, and put that date first in the month. Paid last, your pay is whatever the other bills leave. It is the first thing to give when costs go up.
Exhibit A: the salary nobody set
In 2024 I interviewed 28 owners and asked each of them the same questions. One had taken her firm from about $120,000 a year to $360,000.
Each new client needed someone to serve them. Each new person on payroll needed more clients to cover their salary. So the firm grew, one hire at a time.
Somewhere along the way, this happened:
"I paid my team more than I paid myself."
That happens when every salary in the business is agreed in advance and paid on a date, except the owner's.
Her answer was to get smaller, and it was the right answer for her. The fix this case argues is a smaller one. Give the owner's salary the same two things every other salary already had: an agreed figure, and a date.
Exhibit B: what owners told the surveys
Bluevine, the small-business bank, surveyed 1,052 US owners in February.
Nearly 3 in 10.
That is the share who had delayed paying themselves because customers paid late. In the same survey, 17% had missed payroll or come close to missing it.
Those are two different questions, so the gap between them is not a measurement. Read them side by side anyway. The team's payday is a date the owner has promised. The owner's pay has no date at all.
A late invoice gets paid for by whoever has no payday.
One caveat that matters here: nearly half of Bluevine's respondents turn over less than $100,000 a year. A firm doing $1M has more cushion than that sample. Read the figure as a direction.
In case no. 006 I quoted KeyBank's finding that a third of owners are absorbing rising costs out of their own paycheck. That is the same mechanism, seen from the cost side.
Exhibit C: what changes when the date comes first
You may know this as "pay yourself first", from Profit First. It is one method among several, and the part worth keeping from it is the order.
Paying yourself first changes the day you find out the month is short.
Paid last, a short month shows up at the end, as a smaller draw. By then the bills are paid, and there is nothing left to decide. The shortfall is real, but it never has to be discussed.
Paid first, the same short month shows up on day one. It arrives as a gap between your salary and what is left for everything else. That gap has to be answered while the month is still open. Either a price goes up or a cost comes down.
Paying yourself first moves the shortfall from your pay to a decision.
In case no. 002 I argued that what you pay yourself has to be a number you can say out loud. A date is what keeps that number from drifting.
The verdict
Should you pay yourself first or last each month? First, on a fixed date, at a figure you set before the month starts. Paid last, your pay is whatever the other bills leave, and it gives way whenever a cost goes up. A date puts the shortfall in front of you while you can still change a price or a cost. In the Profit M.A.P, the framework I use with clients, that is the Pay Line step.
What to do with this
Two dates, six months.
Open your business bank statements for the last six months.
For each month, find the date payroll left the account. Then find the date your own pay left it.
Count the days between the two.
If that gap moves from month to month, the month is setting your pay. The same goes for any month with no second date at all.
The sidebar · one number
32%.
That is the share of owners in the same Bluevine survey who keep no reserve at all for late payments. Only 31% keep money set aside for them.
Without a reserve, a late invoice has to be covered by something already in the month. Paid last, that something is you.
Next: case no. 008.
P.S. If the second date was hard to find, that is the finding. The Profit Scan is my read of your numbers. It shows what each part of the business brings in and costs, and where the profit goes before it reaches you. $297. No call: See where your profit goes
One question, and a one-line answer is all it takes: what day of the month do you pay yourself?
Until next Sunday,
Anwin
Anwin Mbah spent 20 years building the systems inside HSBC, Natixis and Zurich that let institutions see their money. A Case for Profit applies that discipline to yours. Wealthfluency is the practice behind it. The Profit Scan is where owners start, at $297, and the Audit and Advisory are what follow.
Know a business owner who wants to make more and keep more? Forward this.