Organizing Finances on an Irregular Income - The $400 Rule

My partner and I were in a situation a few years ago when I was temping of not really knowing for sure exactly how much money we'd have from week to week. Whilst income can move around a lot we found our basic expenses of rent, groceries, bills, transport (essentials) cost $400 a week at a minimum for the two of us. I knew that I would always need to make at least $400 per week to survive. This meant that when I made anything over $400 it went straight into a high interest online savings which I could use if I had a week where I made under $400. You become quite possessive of your savings fund once you start to build it up and I often found that I would try to cut grocery bills so I didn't have to take money out of my savings. Since then my work has become full time but we still have the ‘$400 rule' – which means that I can now save a lot more! As we are getting married next year we are considering how we can make it the ‘$350 rule'! Cheers,
Contributed by Emma Healey