One of the biggest challenges when creating a budget is sometimes the income column.  This is especially true when the income amount varies from week to week.  Most of the time this happens when someone is not a salaried employee and works a different number of hours each week, so how do you figure this into your budget?

One of the safest ways to deal with this issue to to use a base amount in the income column.  For instance if your schedule rotates every two weeks and you work 36 hours one week and 48 hours the next week.  Use the amount from the 36 hour check every week in your budget.  Figure up all of your expenses and your income with only the 36 hour income.  Hopefully there will still be money left in the income column once all of the expenses are taken out.  If there is not, you should look for ways to cut back on your expenses.  The extra money that you make on the longer work weeks will still be there, but if you know for sure that you can balance your budget with the smaller check you can save the extra amount.

It is better to anticipate the smaller amount and go over, than to figure in the higher amount and be left with a negative.