Plan how to keep up with loan repayments when earnings fall

This will act as your monthly budget although you will need to review it in case you want to increase your repayment rate. 

Arrange them in order of fixed expenses (which include your loan repayment amount plus other bills and obligations) and variable expenses like basic necessities and financial goals.

This would ensure that you uphold your loan repayment and other fixed expenses as a priority followed by the variable expenses. 

Similarly, add up all your monthly incomes and work out a monthly average which will act as your typical monthly income.

Figure out how these average earnings fit with your estimate of monthly expenses.  

If your expenses are above this average income, then you need to review your expenditure because you are living beyond your means.

You can do this by cutting your spending, especially variable expenses until it fits into your average income.  

If the budget cannot be reduced further due to the loan repayment rate, you can consider approaching the bank (creditor) for a review of the figure by lowering it and extending the repayment period to make it affordable.   

When your monthly income is unpredictable, fluctuating above or below this average, you need to create a short emergency fund that will cushion you by compensating for lost income during lean periods and into which you can put money in times of plenty.   

The size of this fund will depend on frequency of your earnings.

But it should be sufficient to cover your average monthly expenditure.  

To illustrate this, assume Jacqueline had an irregular income ranging from zero to Sh120,000 with an average monthly income of Sh35,000 and repaying the loan at a rate of Sh20,000 monthly.

Her average expenditure is fixed at Sh20,000 and variable expenditure is Sh15,000.  

Her total monthly expenditure would be a sum of the fixed, variable expenditure plus the repayment rate which totals Sh55,000.

This is above her average monthly income of Sh35,000 so she has to trim her total budget to match this figure.