If you are a teacher, a student with higher summer earnings, an employee that depends on the tourism industry, a tipped employee, an employee that must rely on commissions, etc., then you know that a monthly budget is not easy to do.
However, you might be ahead of the curve as research shows that setting a yearly budget is more accurate as people tend to overestimate slightly and, therefore, have money left over in savings. A yearly budget is a good idea for the nontraditional earners as you can take the average of your yearly income, or the income from last year and base a budget on that for the entire year. Then, split the budget by 12 to get your monthly budget. This means that some months you will have to dip into your savings and some months you can put money away into your savings.
The tricky part of an nontraditional income is not the budget, it's the savings. You must separate your emergency fund from your 'slush fund.' Your slush fund should be used for the drier months, during the summer by the teacher, on colder months for an hourly CA resort worker, etc. If you stick to your new monthly budget, you should earn extra on some months to leave in this fund and use the extra on the slower months.
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