It might seem to be really challenging to reach balance in your budget if you have unstable income. Indeed, it is difficult to predict when and how much money you can get, however, this reason makes planning your budget especially crucial in such situations. There are several tips which can help you to balance your finances even if you do not receive money on a regular basis.
Save as much as you can
Having some funds for a rainy day is a great approach for anyone regardless of the occupation a person have. For the people who can count on regular income, an amount of money equal to three monthly payments might be enough for such savings. Still, if you do not have regular income, it will be sensible for you to keep more money just in case.
As you can imagine, in such a situation, the probability of getting in to a financial trouble is higher, therefore, you should do everything to protect yourself from getting into severe problems. This can be done by saving more money. Certainly, one of the most obvious things you can do in such a situation is being cautious with any greater amounts of money you might receive for your work. Unlike in the case of people with regular income, you cannot just simply enjoy spending an entire sum of money on whatever you want as there is no guarantee you have any payments at all in the foreseeable future.
Do not limit yourself to just a single source of income
Certainly, everything depends on your particular occupation. People with irregular income have different jobs and they can vary with the profits they are giving to people.
Undeniably, if you are not satisfied with the amount of money you are earning, it is certainly sensible to look for additional possibilities for earning. At the same time, there is no particular sense in getting overwhelmed with all possible clients when you can focus only on a rather limited number of projects at a time. There should be some rational approach, however, it will be greater for you to have several options for income in order not to rely exclusively on one of them.
Develop a habit of spreading one payment for two months
Needless to say, there might be various approaches for dealing with an unstable financial situations and you can try all of them in order to check which particular one is working better for you. If you are interested in some techniques which might be useful for your particular situation, you can try the method of earmarking your monthly income for two months.
Again, this is crucial for the people with irregular income since, unlike the people who receive their payment every month, such individuals never know when there will be a moment without any income at all. Unfortunately, because of such a situation, people do not have a chance to fully enjoy all of the money they have earned as there is always psychological pressure coming with the probability of not being able to earn anything in the future.
For that reason, it might be useful to pretend the total amount of money you have earned during a month is actually the payment which is earmarked for two months instead of only one. This is particularly useful for the situations when you cannot foresee the upcoming month will not bring you any great income.
Using this method is based can be used in two ways. The first one is indeed dividing the total amount for two months. Another possibility is just starting spending the sum not right away, but in a month after getting your payment.
Make fixed payments to yourself
Furthermore, there is one curious option which might work for the individuals who actually earn a lot of money, however, the payments are rather scarce. In their situation, it might be handy to transfer all of the received money to a separate account and estimate an average amount of money which can be used during a month. In such a situation, a person might even set a transaction of such an amount of money to the bank account he or she is using on a daily basis, so there will be an effect of receiving salary just like it is in the case of people with fixed income.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, such an approach will be highly useful for people who feel an urge to spend more right after receiving a large payment.