My income is variable, how do I set up a spending plan without a consistent paycheck?

It's generally a good idea to budget for your base or lowest month income and use the higher income periods to create a financial buffer against the unknown.

1. Look at your income history for the past several months and pick a safe, low-end amount. If you have your history in MoneyWell, you can select your income bucket(s) and look at the graph or use the history numbers in the Spending Plan panel.
2. Next, set your expense bucket amounts so they don't exceed this total income.
3. Let Allocate Income fill the buckets only to this amount.

When you have extra money in a month, you can start to build a cash reserve for emergencies. Once you have a buffer of a thousand dollars or more, you can also use the extra income to pay down debt. Do keep building your savings though as you pay down debt because you never know when you'll need to tap into it.

To move money around in your buckets outside of Allocate Income, simply create money flows manually by dragging and dropping one bucket to another.