Eight years on the job is exactly the history that makes tip income usable. Uneven stubs just change how the number gets built. Tips are variable income, so they get averaged rather than taken at their peak. Fannie Mae's standard for variable income is generally a two-year history (a 12-month history can sometimes be considered when other strengths in the file offset the shorter track record), and a declining trend draws extra scrutiny. In practice, when tips are reported on your pay stub, the lender pulls the final stub from each of the last two years and averages those annual totals together with the year-to-date figure on your current stub. That two-years-plus-YTD average smooths the good weeks and the slow weeks into one dependable monthly number, which is why individual stubs looking uneven doesn't hurt you. If your employer doesn't break tips out on the pay stub, there's still a path: a written verification of employment from the employer can supply the tip figures instead. Either way, keep your documentation clean and expect the qualifying figure to reflect the average rather than your best stretch.