Bi-weekly is quite convenient on two conditions: (1) you are actually paid bi-weekly, as many of us are paid monthly. Imagine the horror if you are living paycheck to paycheck and your company switches you to monthly payments right before a 3-payment mortgage month comes along. (2) You can afford to pay a lot more per year.
But the OP is correct that bi-weekly is a gimmick. Yes, you can pay off a loan faster and paying off this type of loan faster saves interest. But you are paying it off faster because with bi-weekly payments you are paying 8.33% more per year than you would with monthly payments (12.5% more on the unlucky years when your first payment happens to be due Jan 1 or leap years when your first payment is due on Jan 2). It is the extra principal that you are paying each year that shortens it and saves interest - not the gimmicky bi-weekly part.
Plus, you can always pay more principal if you want with a monthly payment and get the loan paid off sooner.
Yeah that's the plus side, you pay more on it throughout the year without it really being much of an impact. Did not realize some people got paid monthly though, in that case yeah it would be better to stick to monthly (which is easy to do anyway). Just increase the payments a bit to compensate. Can do that with biweekly too anyway, that's what I do.
I have a rule of thumb, I treat $1,000 like 0. Basically I try to keep my balance at $1000 after my pay check. If I need to move money anywhere such as pay off the credit card, or buy something, I don't go lower than $1000. At night the mortgage comes out ($550) and that leaves me with a minimum of $450 for 2 weeks, for any other bills that come out. End of month I try to keep more in the account because the city taxes alone are about $400 and come out during the last week.
When I buy something I don't need I only do so if all my credit is paid off, and my bank account has >=$1000, or I'm a few days away from my pay check and figure the odds of a bill coming out is slim. I try to buy stuff on my credit card that way I keep the balance in my bank, then pay off the card when I get paid. I do have overdraft but I try to avoid depending on it as the interest is not that great, it's not really made for long term, it's more to protect you from getting a credit hit if the balance is too low.
Though really I need to stop buying things I don't need, period, and save up more. I will admit I rarely hit that $1000 mark for a long time. I make good money so I have no excuse.