Smooth the year into one steady paycheck

What to type in

“Money in” means what actually came in that month from the work, after the costs of earning it (seed, fuel, materials, supplies, platform fees) and before you pay yourself. Use last year’s bank statements or invoice records when you have them. A rough but honest year is more useful than a perfect guess.

If you have less than a year of history, use what you have, estimate the rest, and expect to redraw the wheel after a few months. Type 0 for a month in which nothing came in; leaving a box blank means “not entered yet”, and the results wait until all twelve are in.

Many households also put tax money aside before counting a month as spendable. How much, and when, is a question for a tax professional where you live. The wheel simply uses whatever figures you give it.

How to read the wheel

January sits at the top and the months run clockwise. The length of each wedge is that month’s income, and the outermost edge is your highest month. The dotted ring is your steady pay. Where a wedge reaches past the ring, the extra is copper: money to put by. Where it falls short of the ring, the gap is hatched: money the reserve has to supply.

If the copper and the hatching roughly balance, the year works. The reserve target is the largest total the hatching can reach before copper refills it. The small diamond on the rim marks the current month by your device’s calendar.

You can move around the wheel with the arrow keys, and press Enter on a month to read how it compares with steady pay.

How the numbers are figured

Your average month is the year’s total divided by twelve. Your steady paycheck is that average, less any share you chose to hold back. The reserve target is the biggest fall the reserve would take, from its highest point to its lowest, if you paid yourself the steady amount every month and the year then repeated.

An illustrative example, not your numbers: suppose steady pay is 3,000 and three lean months in a row bring in 2,000, 1,000 and 2,500. The shortfalls are 1,000, 2,000 and 500, so the reserve falls by 3,500 across that stretch. That 3,500 is the amount to have in hand before the stretch begins.

The table runs the same sums month by month so you can check them by hand.

Assumptions and edge cases

• The year repeats. The wheel assumes next year looks like this one. Real years vary, so try drawing a poor year as well as a typical one.
• One-off windfalls. A sale of equipment or land is not a month you can repeat. Leave it out, or the steady pay will be flattered.
• Blank is not zero. A blank box is “not entered”. A zero is a real month with nothing in. Negative figures are not accepted; type 0 instead.
• Holding back. The slider trims steady pay below your average so the reserve grows each year. Leave it at zero for the plain average.
• Rounding. Figures are shown as whole numbers, so a column may differ from its total by one.
• Where it lives. Your entries are kept in this browser only. Clearing site data, or using a private window, forgets them.