Budgeting when no two months look alike
Standard budget advice assumes a salary. Yours moves. The fix is to budget off your slow month, not your average — then treat every good month as surplus with a job already assigned to it.
Pay yourself (every month)
$1,575/mo
Set from the slow month so it never has to shrink.
Reserve in a slow month
$1,125
25% off the top, before anything else.
Reserve in a good month
$2,250
Bigger month, bigger tax bill. Same rule.
Surplus in a good month
$3,375
Retirement, debt payoff, or a buffer fund — decided in advance.
If half your year runs at the good-month level, that surplus is about $20,250 a year with no extra work — money that usually disappears into lifestyle because nothing claimed it first.
The four buckets, in order
- 1
Tax reserve
A fixed percentage of every deposit, moved the day it lands. This is not your money and treating it like it is causes most self-employed cash crises.
- 2
Fixed business costs
Insurance, fuel, software, rent, loan payments. Known, boring, unavoidable — pay them second so they never compete with your paycheck.
- 3
Your paycheck
One flat number, sized to a slow month. Consistency here is what makes a personal budget possible at all.
- 4
Surplus with a name
Buffer fund until you have three months of costs, then retirement, then growth. Unnamed surplus gets spent.
Category caps that hold
Once the buckets are set, cap the variable categories — fuel, supplies, meals, repairs, subscriptions. Set each ceiling slightly under your three-month average, not at some aspirational number. A cap you blow every month teaches you to ignore caps.
Let the ledger keep score
In Hate Ledger, category caps sit next to what you have actually spent this month, auto-reserve moves the tax slice for you, and you get a milestone the first month you stay inside every ceiling.
Educational only. Not tax, legal or financial advice.