How can you estimate how much you have for bills and expenses when your monthly salary changes from one pay check to the next? That’s a problem a lot of people are having to deal with.

A few of the carriers, that I can think of off the top of my head, that could fall into this category would be servers in a restaurant working for salary and tips, truck drivers that are paid by the mile and can never tell how many miles they’re going to get, the self-employed whos monthly income varies from one paydayto the next, and the list could go on.

Trying to maintain your finances with a regular monthly pay check is difficult enough but when you never know what your salary will be seems almost un-imaginable, but it’s not. It is, however, going to be a little harder.

In my monthly budget and bill organizer I talk about averaging your expenses like your phone and electric bill that can change from month to month. The same principle can be used to estimate your monthly pay.

The first thing you need to do is to find paystubs of your pay for as far back as you can. It would be best if you had records going back for at least 6 months.

Take these records and add up the amounts you recieved for the entire time you have records for. Then divide that by the number of months you have records for. This will give you your average monthly income.

If you don’t have any records of your previous pay you may need to go to your employer to get the records needed. If your employer cannot provide you with this information you should start a log of how much you recieve in income every month and use this to develop your budget.

Once you have determined your average monthly income you will need to develop your budget just as if this was your regular pay.

Here’s where it gets tricky. You aren’t always going make the amount you have budgeted. The only way to handle this is to save when you make more than what you have budgeted.

Here’s an example:

You have determined that your monthly budget is $2000 per month;

In January you earn $2500. You will need to put away $500 of that money so that you can make up for any month that your income falls below $2000.

This sounds like an easy solution to a difficult problem but it may not be as easy as it sounds, unless, of course, you accustomed to saving money. It will take some discipline to make sure that money is there when you need it.

There could be a positive side to this method. If you are able to put the extra cash away and you have several months that you make more than your budget you could end up with a fairly large savings account.

When setting up your budget make sure that you don’t underestimate your bills and expenses. This is one of the major reasons many budgets fall appart.

By averaging your pay it will eliminate the “Feast to Famine” approach to your spending. It only makes sense to spread your income out so that you can cover all of your bills and expenses every month.

Of course if you are having difficulties budgeting because of credit card debt and would like to speak to someone about debt consolidation you should speak to a debt counsellor and see what options are available to you.