Emergency cash for couples with uneven incomes
Joint household buffers work differently when one salary is steady and the other arrives in uneven invoices or commissions.
Three months of “essential spending” is a common rule of thumb, yet couples rarely agree on what essential means when school fees, car finance, and a variable bonus sit in the same budget.
We ask households to separate a true emergency reserve (job loss, boiler failure) from a business working-capital float that belongs to the self-employed partner. Mixing the two is how couples end up raiding ISA money for VAT bills.
If uneven income is your main planning friction, Self-Employed Tax-Year Planning often surfaces the cashflow map before investment conversations begin.