I suffer from chronic illness myself. It wasn’t too bad at first, so I just slowed down, but over time my condition became worse – and so did the condition of my house. One day I looked around and thought, “this isn’t working.” See, I had a plan for keeping my home running (fairly) smoothly, but I was no longer able to work the plan. I needed to find a new plan that was designed to work around my unpredictable energy levels.

If you’re reading this, I suspect you’re in the same situation, or at least a similar one.

Having come to this realization, however, I still wasn’t sure how to create a plan when the main variable – my energy level and ability to function – was so, well, variable! After weeks of turning this over in my head, it finally occurred to me that if the problem was a variable energy supply, strategies for managing variable income might yield some answers. After all, the basic principles are the same: an inconsistent supply of a resource needed to cover certain “costs.”

What you now are viewing is the result of the research that realization triggered. I’ve sought out strategies financial counselors recommend for budgeting variable income, and translated them into strategies those of us with variable energy can use to better balance our “energy budgets.”

Maybe you don’t have a chronic illness.

Although this course was written with the chronically ill in mind, there are others in similar situations who may find some of these strategies useful. Hard pregnancies, recovery from injury, lengthy-but-not-chronic illnesses such as mononucleosis, parenting chronically ill kids, etc. – these are all situations where the standard methods don’t always work.