The Golden Pencil: The Freelance Writer’s Resource

Freelance Writing and Savings

by Anne Wayman on October 16th, 2005

The trouble with freelance writing is the uncertainty of income. Until you get a best selling book paying ample royalties or a regular gig of some sort, like a column or corporate writing contract that pays your basic expenses, it can be catch as catch can.

My own experience is I’ll rock along for quite awhile with my writing income exceeding my living expenses and then the bottom falls out. A contract gets canceled or there’s a sudden need to pay big bucks for something like a major car repair or medical expense.

The ideal is to have six months or more living expenses in a savings account, plus another amount in savings for emergencies. Building that sort of cushion takes real discipline – the same sort of discipline it takes to keep on writing. But it’s not as much fun, unless we change our thinking.

The only way I know to build up savings is to put at least 10% of every single paid fee into the savings account. It doesn’t matter if that’s only a buck, although we should be getting paid more than that for most of our projects. And when the fee is a big one, it’s a good idea to put aside more. This is in addition to the savings for taxes – the total, taxes and savings, should be somewhere around 30-40% - which is a huge hunk!

Remember, however, that this is a goal. It’s something to work toward, one dollar, 10 dollars, etc. at a time. But we’ll never get there if we don’t start.

Write well and often,

You may also want to read: Maybe It’s Time to Increase Your Freelance Writing Fees!

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POSTED IN: Business of Freelance Writing