Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about. My husband is a carpenter and his salary fluctuates like the weather....literally. If it's raining, snowing, too cold, too hot - he doesn't work. And he doesn't get paid. Likewise with vacation or sick time - there is NO paid time off.

Like you, I keep track of our budget in Excel and I run it on an every-other-week cycle (so two paychecks for each cycle, 26 cycles a year). We have our bare minimum expenses (mortgage/taxes, utilities, one car payment, gasoline, tithing, and food.) Everything else is an extra to be "paid" when we have the money to do so. It's a rarity that we don't have enough to cover the bare minimum basics.

Any extra gets divied up into "funds" (which I keep track of in Excel, with the actual money sitting in a savings account until it's needed.) Funds are things like savings, IRAs, college funds, car repair fund, clothing, out-of-pocket medical expenses, insurance (obviously a higher priority than the clothing fund), vacation, or anything that we would like to buy (e.g., furniture, home repairs, gadgets, etc.) When money is tight, we're obviously not saving much money into the car repair fund, but when the money is flowing, we're able to pay the higher priority "funds" and put a little away into savings for the occasional times we may come up short in the budget for bare minimum expenses. In dire circumstances only (like when my husband was laid off last year two weeks before Christmas), I will take money from funds to pay higher priority bills (e.g., pay mortgage from the vacation fund.)

It's important to note that when we have any extra over and above our bare minimimum bills, it's not a free-for-all spending spree. We are responsible with that extra and save it because the insurance bill will eventually come due, and the car will ultimately need repairs, and one day we'd like to have the money on which to retire!

For many people this may seem like an extreme way to live. But I guarantee it works, and I can go to sleep at night not worrying about growing credit card debt or wondering if we'll be able to pay our bills (and it's not as grim as it might seem - we do occasionally go out to eat, see a movie, go to the zoo, sign up our kids maybe twice a year for some extra-curricular activity, are planning a Disney trip next year [if all goes well - after two years of saving], etc.) But it's not possible to live high on the hog when you don't know when or how much your next check is going to be. The only viable option is to be super responsible and restrictive with yourself.

Thank you so much for this post. My husband has been on commission for the past two years now, and I am still having a really hard time budgeting with it. I try to put the extra commission in the saving to have for the months when the commission is low...but then when my husband gets paid out on a big sale he wants to reward himself for all the hard work he put in to land that sale. I feel guilty because I know he works so hard, but at the same time it would be nice to use that extra money to pay down the home equity loan, etc. Does anyone else face a similar problem? If so how do you deal with it?

Yes I feel the same way. My dh likes to have things namely "toys" so I try to make a saving line in the budget for those things for him on occasion. I feel bad that he can't get all the things he would like to have but he's really pretty good about it. Right now my dh wants a big screen tv. So we are saving up some for it and once he goes out on one more job, he'll be able to get it. Do we need it? Nope. But he doesn't spend a lot of daily money so I figure it evens out eventually.

Maybe you could make goals and not get something purely fun every time he gets a big sale but every few times he can get something. Take a little bit out and then he'll have enough for something he has his eye on. That is what we do.

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Proud mommy to adorable Kinsley

We stockpile things when times are good such as food, toiletriies, clothing and books. Then we draw on these stockpiles when times are bad. We also save our change and usually save about $500 per year. We had to cash the coins in one year when our sewer line overflowed. We put $2500 into a medical reimbursement account each year and when our income goes down, we turn in our medical receipts to get the money. We also have lots of insurance in all areas of our lives, and we have an emergency fund we can tap.

I can hear everyone cringing after they read this but we use our income tax refund to pre-pay all of our utility bills. Our only expenses are mortgage, entertainment, gas and food each month.

DH just started his company this year and it has been slow going, so far. For every major expense lately, we have been barely (by as much as $10) sliding by and getting them paid. I have to agree that my Faith grows every day, because I can stress all I want, but it doesn't change a thing. It's when I have faith and rely on God that I don't put my body through something it doesn't need to go through and it always works out on time. For example, we were able to pay our mortgage the day before we would have gotten charged a late fee. That, to me, is soooo dang stressful, but like George Michael said, "I gotta have faith". And, God never lets me down. DH told me he once, he was stressing really hard and God showed him a picture of a fish flopping all over the place, then the picture got wider and he saw that the fish was in a huge hand and as much as it flopped around, the hand still had it and it wasn't going to let the fish fall. It's like, no matter how much you stress, you're like that fish, flopping around on God's big hand, but it's silly, because God's never going to let you drop. I think of that whenever I start to stress out. Silly as it sounds, it makes me stop and trust in God.

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Frugal is being wise with your money and resources and cheap is forcing everyone else to.

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