{"id":1811,"date":"2015-02-18T00:15:17","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T08:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/?p=1811"},"modified":"2015-02-17T10:42:37","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T18:42:37","slug":"how-to-budget-irregular-income","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/how-to-budget-irregular-income\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Budget Irregular Income"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"When<\/a>One thing that stops many people from taking the plunge into self-employment is irregular income. It can seem scary to have money coming in sporadically rather than the same amount week after week.<\/p>\n

However, budgeting for irregular income really isn\u2019t that difficult.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s two different ways you can do it depending on the consistency of your current take home pay.<\/p>\n

List Your Last Six Months\u2019 Worth of Net Pay<\/h2>\n

Before you take the leap into self-employment I would highly suggest that you start on the side.<\/a> You need to be able to see what kind of potential your business has and you need to know what to expect income wise.<\/p>\n

If you have no idea what kind of money you\u2019ll be bringing home it\u2019s going to be hard to set up your budget.<\/p>\n

Your first step is to list out your last six months\u2019 worth of net pay. (Your net pay is what you earn minus any expenses and minus taxes.)<\/p>\n

If Your Net Pay is Super Inconsistent<\/h2>\n

If your net pay over the last six months is all over the place you need to base your budget off of your lowest month. This keeps you super safe when creating your budget.<\/p>\n

Any excess money can be put into a \u201csalary fund\u201d so that you can build up reserves to eventually average your last six months\u2019 worth of income. Try to build up your salary fund to six months\u2019 worth of your average net pay.<\/p>\n

If Your Net Pay is Fairly Consistent<\/h2>\n

If your take home pay doesn\u2019t veer too much from month to month you\u2019ll be safe just averaging out those six months and using the average for budgeting purposes.<\/p>\n

Whatever money you have left over will need to be put into a salary fund until you get this built up to at least six months\u2019 worth of expenses.<\/p>\n

Why a Salary Fund is Crucial for Beginners<\/h2>\n

If you jump into self-employment or a commission based career without any savings you\u2019ll set yourself up for budgeting failure. You must have a cushion to fall back on!<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important to use your lowest income month or your average income month for a while and then build up a six month salary fund.<\/p>\n

You can re-evaluate your income every six months or so to see whether you should give yourself a raise or a pay cut.<\/p>\n

As long as you err on the side of caution budgeting for irregular income doesn\u2019t have to be hard. You can make your budget regular by either basing your spending off of your lowest or average income month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One thing that stops many people from taking the plunge into self-employment is irregular income. It can seem scary to have money coming in sporadically rather than the same amount week after week. However, budgeting for irregular income really isn\u2019t that difficult. Here\u2019s two different ways you can do it depending on the consistency of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1812,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[188,460,108],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cultofmoney.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}