So , you ' ve tried to ween yourself off telling thanksgiving day jokes , but today you ' ve decided to go cold turkey ? <| sep |> platesauceI ' ve been very pleased with this recipe ! <| sep |> This piece tells all about not only Christmas trees but also yule logs . Honoring the Scandinavian fertility god , Yul , a yule log is a cock . <| sep |> I ' m selfemployed in the music business so this is old news to me . 1 . Averages . Take in as much data as you can and calculate what you can depend on . For example , barring anything unexpected , my income would be $ 3 , 710 month . But that ' s not an average , that ' s a maximum potential . Realistically I know that over the course of a year , I make 4 % less than my potential on average . Since I log all of my income , I can check that number whenever I want to update it if necessary . Right now it ' s based on 3 years of data . 2 . CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATES . This is super important , it ' s where discipline comes in . That number I just gave , 4 %? That ' s an overestimation . I give myself some cushion . I do the same for my effective taxrate , which I currently estimate to be 18 % but is actually a little lower typically . But I don ' t want to be caught not saving enough to cover my taxes so I overestimate that number . Never allow yourself the luxury of saying I ' ll probably have this much by the end of the month . It has to be more definite than that . 3 . Shortfall savings . I don ' t have a better term for it but just always make sure you have money easily available to cover the months that are below average because , well , that ' s how it works of course . Some months will be more and some months will be less . Your budget will be based on a number between the two but closer to the smaller one , but that means sometimes you ' ll need more than what you brought in that month . This is a little separate from emergency savings , because you ' ll need to access it fairly regularly . I need to go I have a gig , actually but if you ask I can give you more details on how I actually manage all of this between bank accounts , budgets , spreadsheets , etc .