Irregular pay, partners and months it goes wrong

The method is simple. Some situations aren't, and I should be plain about them.

If your income is irregular. Freelancers, people on commission, people on zero-hours contracts and the self-employed can't set a fixed monthly transfer against a payday that moves and varies. Use a percentage in place of a fixed sum, and apply it each time money arrives. Every time a payment lands, move your chosen share to the pot the same day, before you do anything else with it. It can't be automated in quite the same way, so it needs a rule that you don't reopen each time. "Ten per cent of everything, the day it arrives." Irregular earners need a cushion more than anyone, because they have thin months as well as broken washing machines. If you're self-employed, you'll also need to set aside money for tax, in a separate pot from your savings. How much depends on your circumstances, and HMRC's guidance or an accountant can tell you. Don't count the tax pot as savings, because that money belongs to HMRC.

If you share finances. The method works for a couple, but both of you need to know about it. Agree the amount together and decide whose account the transfer leaves from. Write the sentence about what the cushion is for together, since you may have different ideas about what counts as an emergency. If one of you is the natural spender and the other the natural saver, the transfer is good for the peace, because it settles the saving question once a month and leaves the rest free. If you keep your finances separate, each of you can run your own. The caution in the preface applies here as well. If you're prevented from having money of your own, or from knowing what comes in and goes out, that's a different problem from the one in this book. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline can help.

If you receive benefits. Check how savings affect what you get before you build them up, as chapter 11 said. If you're eligible for Help to Save, look at it first, since the bonus is better than anything else you could do with up to fifty pounds a month.

Apps that save for you. Some banks and apps offer automatic saving features. They round up each purchase and put the pennies aside, or move small sums when they judge that you can spare them. I'm not recommending any of them, and I haven't studied how well they work. They do follow the principle of this book, since the saving happens without a decision from you. Their weakness is that the amounts are small and vary with your spending, so you can't say in advance what you'll have saved by the end of the year. I'd treat them as an extra on top of the standing order. They don't replace it.

If you're starting late. Reading this at fifty, you may feel that the time for this has gone. It hasn't, as far as a cushion is concerned. A cushion takes a year or two to build at any age, and it does the same job at fifty-five as at twenty-five. Retirement saving is a different matter, and the years do count there. That's a reason to get guidance soon, and it's no reason to give up. The government offers free pension guidance to people over fifty through a service called Pension Wise. I know of it from general knowledge and haven't checked its current terms.

Windfalls. A tax rebate, a bonus, a gift or an inheritance doesn't arrive on payday, and nothing about it is automatic. The leftover plan treats windfalls the way it treats everything, and they vanish into a slightly better few months. Decide your rule in advance, before the money comes. Many people like a split, with part to the pot and part to enjoy, so that the windfall still feels like one. The exact proportions are up to you. The day the money lands, move the saved share before you do anything else with it.

If prices rise faster than your pay. There are periods when your essentials cost more each month and your income doesn't keep up. If the transfer becomes unaffordable, lower it. Keep it going at some level if you can, even a token one, because the habit is easier to keep than to restart. If even a token is too much, stop it and restart when you can. You won't have failed if that happens. The method will still be there when things ease.

When you've had to use it all. A run of bad luck can empty the pot, and the experience is disheartening. It's worth seeing it for what it is, though. The cushion has done its job, several times in a row, and you've come through without borrowing, or with less borrowing than you'd otherwise have needed. The transfer is still running, and the pot will fill again.

Months it goes wrong. Sooner or later there'll be a month when you raid the pot for something that didn't qualify, or cancel the standing order in a panic. It happens to everyone who tries to change a long habit, and it doesn't undo what you've learned. When you notice, reinstate the standing order, at a lower figure if that's what it takes. Don't try to pay back what you took in one go. The standing order is what makes the method work. While it's running you're saving, whatever happened last month.

When you want to do more. Once the cushion is in place you'll start to have questions this book doesn't answer. You might ask where longer-term money should go, whether to pay more into a pension, or what to do about a mortgage. Those depend on your circumstances, and some of them call for regulated financial advice. The government-backed MoneyHelper service is a sensible place to start reading. The habit in this book comes before all of those questions. Whatever you decide to do with your savings, you'll only have any if they leave your account before you've had the chance to spend them.