Welcome back to creating a budget! This post is for all of you who do not have a regular income. That would be those of you who get paid on commission or are self-employed like my husband and I.
Yesterday I had you continue to work through your Monthly Cash Flow Plan. We are actually going to do a little bit of backtracking today because you will be using a new form but I wanted you to get an idea of how much money you need in each category. The more aware of how much money you need for expenses and how much money you tend to make, the easier you will have creating a budget that actually works for you.
For today, you are going to need to print out Dave Ramsey’s Irregular Income Planning Form. You will also need the Monthly Cash Flow Plan from yesterday that you filled out. (In case you haven’t had time to do one yet, here is the link to printing one out!)
Dave recommends filling out the Monthly Cash Flow Plan with numbers that you expect to bring home for the month. This number should be reasonable and if you don’t know where to start, he recommends using the month where you had the lowest income in the last year.
If you used a number yesterday for your income that is reasonable you are ready to move to step 2. If not, you may want to make a few revisions to the Cash Flow before moving on.
The next step is to list any expenses that you couldn’t pay on your Monthly Cash Flow Plan because you ran out of money. This could be bills from a vet clinic, extra money to pay down on debt, etc. These need to go into Column A on the Irregular Income Planning sheet.
Step 3 is reviewing these items you just put into Column A and putting them in order of priority filling out the amount budgeted (Column B) and running total (Column C) as you go. The highest priority needs to go on the first line.
Step 4 is each time you get paid and you receive more money than you budgeted in your Monthly Cash Flow you put the additional income in the top box of your Irregular Income Planning Sheet. (For example if you have $1,000 of income on your Monthly Cash Flow and you were paid $1,700, you would put $700 on your Irregular Income Planning Sheet.)
The last step, Step 5 is when you have the additional money to go straight down the list and apply it until it’s all gone. Dave notes that you probably won’t make it all the way down the list and that’s ok, use as much as you can and with the next pay check when you have additional money you can pick up where you left off. That is why we made this list to prioritize what is the most important!
Continue doing this every time you get paid and you will make strides in your budgeting and saving. It is a bit time-consuming but keep going! You are on your way to changing your life.
What do you think of this advice? Is it helping you plan? In case you missed the other posts in this series, here they are:
I do all our budgeting here and will very much try to utilize your tips here now. thanks for sharing and also for stopping by my blog today, too!! 🙂
Hopping over from From House to Home! Thank you for these tips! My husband has a regular income, but I get side jobs here and there and sometimes don’t know where the money should go. I should start fitting it in to our regular budget! Thanks!
This is such a great step by step guide!
Thanks for sharing at Essential Fridays.
Blessings
Mel from Essential Thing Devotions
Thanks so much for sharing at Wednesday’s Adorned From Above Link Party.
Debi and Charly