Paying down debt with a varing salary

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-30-2007
Paying down debt with a varing salary
4
Mon, 01-04-2010 - 11:02pm

I need some help with the best way to pay down debt when my husband...who is the main bread winner...has such a varying income. He does get about 65% of his income in paychecks that he gets every two weeks. I also work full-time but I get a set amount on the opposite fridays...except I get half of what he gets. So how do I manage this..the income comes is spurts you never know how much he will get...depends on how well he did for sales that month/quarter. To make a long story short...if we don't go out to eat more than once every other week and don't go with our friends more a couple times a month...we don't need that extra income. But if anything comes up, like a vet bill, car trouble, summer vacations, etc we need this money to pay for it. I am very scared of something happening and not having the money to pay for it. I do have some CC debt..about $3,000 at 2% but that isn't very much and I keep a pretty healthly efund..$10,000.


Any suggestions?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-02-1998
Tue, 01-05-2010 - 12:49am
Can you put some or all of the quarterly income into an emergency type fund?
My DH also gets paid in this manner. it is a real pain when you don't know what you will be getting. I have a few bills that come due quarterly at the same time his commission cheques are due. (Medical, insurances that sort of bills) What I have been trying to do is budget our bills to just what his regular cheques and my paycheque is and not really think about how much the commission cheques will be. Other than I know that I will pay medical and insurance out of that. Then anything left can be put towards debt and a holiday/entertainment fund. Hope this helps. it sounds a bit confusing when I try to write it down.
Sharon


Community Leader
Registered: 07-26-1999
Tue, 01-05-2010 - 9:30am
We've done the same for the 18 months, DH's job was all commission, so there wasn't even a set amount he made each week, and I get paid once a month salary. What I would do was basically determine what the minimum amount he usually made on a monthly basis and use that to determine what my budget was, and then anything extra that he made went into a savings for what other things came up during the month that I hadn't accounted for. And then in the summer when it was his high earning time, I'd take the large extra income and try and put it away for the winter months when his paychecks were considerably smaller, and I would also pay ahead regular monthly bills during the high earning times so that in the lower earning months, if we didn't have the money, I could skip paying that bill altogether. It didn't always work, and there were times we cut it close or had to draw from the EFund, but for the most part it worked pretty well.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-04-2008
Tue, 01-05-2010 - 1:47pm

I have to agree with the others and did just that at one point when I was on a commission.




iVillage Member
Registered: 10-30-2007
Tue, 01-05-2010 - 9:25pm
Thanks for the help. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one with this situation. Sometimes I think it would be easier to have the same income each month...but I can make it work to our advantage if I can get our monthly expenses down so that we don't need the comissions/bonuses.

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