Easy Come, Easy Go: How To Budget With Sporadic Child Support Payments
If you have sole physical custody of the children or if you have gone through a divorce, there is a chance that your children's other parent has been ordered to pay child support. For some, child support will always come at the expected day of the month. For others, child support can be more sporadic. If you fall into the second category and you do not receive regular child support payments like you are supposed to, it can make it difficult to budget. Here are some ways to make budgeting easier if you receive sporadic child support payments.
Make assumptions based on your own income
If your former partner is being irresponsible with child support payments, it is best to throw this column out of the monthly budget entirely. Make a monthly budget based on your income alone. If you have children who have different parents and one parent does contribute child support as expected, you can count this as household income, when you are doing your budget. Be sure to keep the lines of communication open with your children's parent and ask them to let you know in advance if they foresee any issues happening with payments.
Use the money for seasonal items
If you receive child support payments only some of the time, use these payments to plan out seasonal items. This includes summer activities for the children, winter coats, presents for the holidays, and sports sign up fees. Using sporadic child support payments for these extras for your child will make their life more enjoyable and help you keep a stable monthly budget without having to deal with the once in a year extras. If you make enough money to care for your child's needs and extras, ask them what they would prefer to do with the spare money so that you know they get something they will enjoy.
Put lump payments into savings accounts
If you tend to get child support only after the other parent has gotten in legal trouble for not paying child support, you may get some lump sum payments. This windfall to your budget should be placed in a savings account for your child. Do not designate this specifically as a college fund or any other specific fund, as you and your child may need to dip into this money during tough times. The positive thing about getting a lump sum payment is that it can boost up the emergency fund for your household so that you are better equipped to deal with financial curve balls on your own in the future.