Even if your pay is irregular, your bills usually aren’t. If your work doesn’t allow for steady income, fake it by setting up a separate account to pay yourself from.
Photo by Linus Bohman
As personal finance blog Bible Money Matters points out, it’s not too difficult to set up multiple accounts for your money. To stabilise irregular income, funnel all your pay into one main account, then set up a regular “fake” pay each month (or every two weeks, however you prefer) which automatically transfers to the account you spend your money from. The idea is that you don’t overspend on the months where you make plenty, and can save the excess for the months you have too little:
I opened up a business cheque account and all my freelance income was deposited into there. The amounts of my income would vary wildly. Some months I had no income at all, and some months were three times what I needed to live on. But it didn’t matter. My only goal was to keep the balance over $4000 so that I could pay myself next month. If I made more than $4000 in a month I let it sit and accumulate to get a couple of pays ahead.
The concept of paying yourself is nothing new to freelancers and business owners alike. However, automating the process has never been easier.
Faking A Predictable Paycheck When You Have Fluctuating Income [Bible Money Matters via Rockstar Finance]
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