The Irregular Income Playbook: Budget Smarter When Your Paycheck Never Stays the Same

Brian McCann is a financial educator and the author of The Irregular Income Playbook. He spent fifteen years as a freelance writer and marketing consultant, riding the cycles every independent worker knows well: banner months that felt like wealth, dry months that felt like failure, and a tax bill that always arrived at the worst possible moment. After a particularly brutal slow season nearly wiped out his savings, he started building the system described in these pages—a baseline budget, an income-smoothing owner's draw, and a set of sinking funds that turned an unpredictable income into a reliable monthly paycheck.

The system worked so well that fellow freelancers began asking for his spreadsheets, which grew into the Freelancer's Money Toolkit, a free budgeting suite now used by thousands of self-employed workers. He teaches budgeting workshops at co-working spaces, freelance conferences, and small business groups, and his writing on money and independent work has appeared in newsletters and publications serving freelancers.

Brian lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and their rescue dog. Between client seasons he hikes the Cascades, tinkers with spreadsheets, and continues to be surprised by how quickly a good system makes a bad month feel ordinary. He writes from a simple conviction: you shouldn't have to hate your budget to have one.