I spent way too long trying to make my finances fit a "divide your paycheck by 30" template before I realized the problem wasn't me — it was the math. If your income swings from a $220 week to a $1,900 week (gig work, freelancing, content, sales), fixed-dollar budgets break the first slow week you hit, and then it feels like you failed at budgeting.

Here's the fix I've been using, and it's the whole reason I built Stuffed:

Stop budgeting dollars. Budget percentages.

Instead of "put $300 in groceries," it's "put 10% of every deposit in groceries" — so a $1,900 week stuffs $190 and a $220 week stuffs $22. Every category scales with reality instead of assuming reality.

Know your 3 income tiers before you touch a single envelope.

Pull your last 3 months of deposits and find your Base Week (worst realistic week), Mid Week (typical), and Peak Week (best). Your fixed bills — rent, phone, insurance — need to fit inside a Base Week. That one rule alone stops a slow week from wrecking your rent money.

Build a Priority Stacking order for bad weeks.

When a payment lands and it's a Base (or below) week, fill envelopes in a strict order — rent, utilities, debt minimums, insurance, groceries, taxes, gas — and stop wherever the money runs out. Whatever didn't get filled is exactly what a "Low-Week Buffer" sinking fund exists to cover.

Flip the order on Peak weeks.

Fill your Low-Week Buffer and Taxes envelope FIRST on a good week, before touching fun money. Peak weeks are how you build the cushion that saves the next Base week.

This is the whole system, free, right here. If you want it as a printable binder + tracker instead of rebuilding it yourself, I packaged it — but the method above works whether you buy anything from me or not. Curious how other irregular-income earners here handle the "some weeks are $200, some are $2k" problem — drop your system below.