Are you getting a bonus paycheck in March? How to know

(NEXSTAR) — While not as rare as Leap Day, March is going to be a special month for some: a three-paycheck month.

That’s as long as you fall within a certain group of workers.

You’ll need to be among those Americans who get paid biweekly on Fridays and received their first check of the year on January 5. Your first paycheck will come on March 1, with the next two coming on March 15 and 29.

“So if you’re getting paid on the first, third and fifth Fridays, that means you have a bonus paycheck, which obviously you still earned but is potentially outside of your regular budget and kind of like a mini windfall or a mini bonus,” Chanelle Bessette, banking specialist with NerdWallet, previously told Nexstar.

That also means if you get paid weekly, you’ll see a fifth paycheck in March.

If you are paid biweekly on Thursdays, however, you won’t see a three-paycheck month. You can blame Leap Day for that. Had February been a 28-day month, March would’ve started on Thursday, which would’ve given you three paydays: March 1, 15, and 29.

As you can probably guess, not every employee who gets biweekly checks will get an “extra” check during the same months. If you won’t get a paycheck until March 9, your three-paycheck months will be May and November this year, according to Alliant Credit Union. Those getting three paychecks in March have to wait until August for the same treatment.

So what’s behind the financial phenomenon?

Dividing 52 weeks by two — since payments are biweekly — means that you will get 26 checks over the course of the year. But if you were to just multiply the number of months in a year by two, you would only get 24. So a third paycheck will go out in a couple of months during the year, usually very early in the month.

Before you can count a third paycheck as a “bonus check,” you should review your budget and debts. If you’re on track with two paychecks a month, then a third twice a year can be used for investing or other financial goals, according to Alliant.

It may help to think of the third paycheck like a tax refund, Bessette said. Depending on one’s financial situation, the money could be used to pay off a nagging bill, make an extra mortgage payment or line an emergency fund.

You may have already had a surprise on your paychecks this year: you may be making more money than in 2023, even if you didn’t get a raise.

It’s all thanks to changes made by the federal government (unless you did actually get a raise of more than roughly 5.4% to start the year, then it’s partially due to that, too).

In November, the IRS announced inflation adjustments to the tax code, including changes to the standard deduction and individual income brackets. The standard deduction is a dollar amount that reduces the amount of income that is taxable.

So, depending on your withholdings, and if you’re making roughly what you did in 2023, you could be seeing a small increase in your paychecks this year. You can see more specifically where the increase is coming from by comparing the federal withholdings on your first paycheck of 2024 to the last paycheck you received in 2023.

Although you’re technically taking home more money each week (or every other week, depending on your employer’s pay schedule), the funds are intended to help offset the inflation we’re still seeing.