The freelance and gig economy has revolutionized how we think about work, offering flexibility and autonomy. Levered Income is about leveraging business models and tools to generate more residual income along the path to financial independence.
However, with the freedom of being your own boss comes the challenge of managing an irregular income. Freelancers often experience fluctuations in their cash flow, making traditional budgeting advice less applicable. Here are strategies specifically tailored for freelancers to manage their irregular income and expenses effectively.
1. Understand Your Income Pattern
Understanding your income pattern is a vital step for freelancers in managing their finances.
This involves closely analyzing your earnings over the past year to identify trends and cycles in your cash flow. You may discover that certain times of the year are more lucrative, possibly due to seasonal demand for your services or recurring projects. Conversely, you might identify periods when work tends to slow down.
Recognizing these patterns enables you to anticipate and plan for fluctuations in your income, helping you to budget more effectively, prepare for leaner months, and capitalize on the times when income is higher. Accurate knowledge of when you’ll likely earn more or less is crucial for making informed decisions about saving, spending, and investing throughout the year.
2. Calculate Your Baseline Expenses
Calculating your baseline expenses is about determining the absolute minimum you need to sustain your day-to-day life.
For freelancers and those with fluctuating incomes, you HAVE to know this figure.
It includes the total monthly cost of all essential expenses — the non-negotiables you must pay to maintain your livelihood. This typically covers housing costs, utility bills, food, healthcare, transportation, and other essential services like insurance.
By pinpointing this baseline, you establish the threshold of what you need to earn each month to stay afloat financially. Understanding your baseline expenses helps you set the minimum income target to aim for during slower business periods, ensuring you can meet your essential needs without resorting to debt or depleting your emergency funds.
3. Implement a Variable Budget
Since your income isn’t fixed, your budget shouldn’t be either.
Implementing a variable budget is a strategic approach for those with fluctuating incomes, such as freelancers or gig workers, to manage their finances. Unlike a fixed budget, a variable budget is flexible; it scales up or down based on the income earned in a given period.
In months where income is lower, spending is pared down to cover just the essentials, ensuring that necessities are prioritized.
During more prosperous months, when income exceeds the baseline needs, the surplus is allocated towards savings, investments, and non-essential spending.
This method requires regular monitoring of income and expenses to adjust the budget accordingly, allowing for financial stability in the face of unpredictable earnings. A variable budget accommodates freelance income’s natural ebb and flow, ensuring that every dollar is optimally utilized.
4. Build a Buffer
Building a financial buffer involves setting aside savings to cushion against income volatility, which is particularly important for freelancers and those with irregular income streams.
This buffer, often called an emergency fund, should theoretically cover three to six months’ baseline expenses — the absolute necessities like housing, food, utilities, and transportation.
Having this reserve ensures that during periods of lower income or when unexpected expenses arise, you have the funds to maintain your standard of living without going into debt.
This buffer acts as a financial shock absorber, providing peace of mind and the ability to navigate through lean times without disrupting your financial stability. It’s an essential part of a sound financial plan, allowing you to focus on your work and business growth rather than worrying about covering next month’s bills.
You need time to work your plan.
5. Pay Yourself a Salary
Paying yourself a salary as a freelancer or business owner means setting a consistent amount you regularly withdraw from your business earnings for personal use, much like a traditional paycheck.
This amount should cover your personal baseline expenses, ensuring you can fulfill your monthly financial obligations. Doing this creates a sense of stability akin to regular employment, which can be especially helpful given the fluctuating nature of business income.
Any additional income beyond your ‘salary’ can then be directed towards your financial buffer, savings, investments, or reinvested into the business to fuel growth.
This disciplined approach helps separate personal and business finances, simplifies budgeting, and ensures that you and your business are financially healthy.
6. Prioritize Saving for Taxes
For freelancers and independent contractors, prioritizing tax savings is essential due to the lack of automatic tax withholdings from their income. A lot of new freelancers make this mistake, and it costs them.
It’s important to proactively set aside a portion of every payment received into a dedicated tax savings account. This percentage should be calculated based on your tax bracket, estimated tax liability, and any applicable deductions or credits.
By consistently allocating funds for taxes, you ensure that when tax time arrives, you have the necessary funds to cover your tax bill without stress or financial strain.
This habit prevents the shock of a large lump-sum payment and helps avoid potential penalties or interest charges from underpayment. Regularly saving for taxes is a key component of a sound financial management strategy for anyone with a non-traditional income structure.
7. Use “Profit First” Accounting
The ‘Profit First‘ accounting method reverses the traditional business accounting formula where sales minus expenses equals profit.
Instead, it dictates that sales minus profit equals expenses. With this approach, you immediately allocate a percentage of every income to profit, owner’s compensation, taxes, and operating expenses.
This system forces you to adjust your business expenses based on remaining funds, ensuring that you take a profit from each sale. It’s designed to encourage businesses to prioritize financial health, reward the business owner, and maintain a fiscal discipline that supports sustainable growth. By taking profit first, you safeguard the business’s and its owners’ economic future rather than treating profit as an afterthought.
If you're looking to transform your business finances and prioritize profitability, we highly recommend giving Profit First a read.
Discover the innovative concepts Mike Michalowicz introduces and watch as your business becomes a money-making machine.
8. Diversify Your Income Streams
Diversifying your income streams means creating multiple sources of income to reduce reliance on any single client or job. (The goal of Levered Income.)
For freelancers and gig workers, income diversification safeguards against volatility and uncertainty. It involves expanding your revenue sources across different clients, industries, and types of work. This could include undertaking freelance projects, developing passive income streams through investments, creating and selling digital products, or even offering educational services such as courses or workshops.
With a diversified income, if one stream suffers due to market trends or other factors, the others can help to compensate, ensuring more stable and consistent overall earnings. This strategy not only protects against financial downturns but can also lead to increased overall income and opportunities for growth.
9. Regular Financial Reviews
Regular financial reviews are systematic evaluations of your financial status at set intervals.
You maintain a clear and current vision of your financial health by dedicating time weekly or monthly to assess your income, expenses, savings, and investments. These reviews allow you to monitor cash flow, identify and correct spending issues, and ensure that your savings and investments are on target. They also allow you to adjust your budget and financial plan in response to any life changes or economic shifts.
Consistent financial reviews are a cornerstone of effective money management, helping to reinforce good financial habits, anticipate potential problems, and adjust strategies to meet your financial goals more efficiently.
10. Invest in Accounting Software
Investing in accounting software is a practical move for efficiently tracking and managing your financial transactions. We use (and love) Quickbooks.
This software automates the process of recording income and expenses, providing real-time insights into your financial status. Such tools are invaluable for freelancers, small business owners, or anyone with variable incomes and expenses. They simplify the complex tasks of budgeting, tax preparation, and financial reporting, often offering features like invoice creation, expense categorization, and profit and loss statements.
By using accounting software, you can understand how your money is being used, identify spending trends, and make informed decisions about your finances. It also saves time and reduces errors compared to manual tracking, making financial management more efficient and less burdensome.
Final Thoughts on Irregular Income Streams
Budgeting with an irregular income requires a proactive approach and a mindset that embraces flexibility.
By understanding your income patterns, prioritizing savings (especially for taxes and emergencies), and continuously adjusting your budget, you can create financial stability in the unpredictable world of freelancing.
Remember, successful budgeting as a freelancer is about planning for the lean times during the bountiful ones and always keeping a clear view of your financial health.
