Managing Your Money And Budgeting Well As A Freelancer

Managing finances can be challenging as a freelancer when your income fluctuates. Our discussion today is about how to create a financial plan and manage your money to prepare you for the ebb and flow that can happen as a freelancer. We discuss how to create a solid financial plan, a process to make sound money decisions, and we review tools you can use to make the process a lot smoother. As a freelancer, virtual assistant, or work-from-home business owner, this episode will give you tools to empower you to make a financial plan that supports your business and your life.

In today’s episode you’ll learn:

• How to create a budget as a freelancer
• A filter to put your money decisions through for spending money wisely
• Tools to make finances easier 
• Building a financial plan that fits your individual business needs

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YNAB Budgeting Software: https://www.youneedabudget.com/

Dave Ramsey: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/ 

This blog post is a summary of The School of Copy And Messaging Podcast episode #87. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts

Full Audio Transcription of this Podcast Episode:

Amber (00:00):

Hey there. Freelancer. Thanks for joining me today on freelancer Friday today, we're talking about finances. Managing finances can be challenging as a freelancer when your income fluctuates, especially if you're new to freelancing. Our discussion today is about how to create a financial plan and manage your money to prepare you for the ebb and flow that can happen. As a freelancer, we discuss how to create a solid financial plan, a process to make sound money decisions, and we revealed tools that you can use to make that process a lot smoother. As a freelancer virtual assistant or work from home business owner. This episode will give you tools to empower you, to make a financial plan that supports your business and your life. In today's episode, you're going to learn how to create a budget as a freelancer, a filter, to put your money decisions through for spending money wisely tools, to make finances easier and building a financial plan that fits your individual business needs.

Amber (01:01):

Hey there, freelancer, did you start your freelancing business, wanting more time and money. Freedom only to find yourself feeling stuck, doing everybody else's busywork, and now you feel like you need something to uplevel and differentiate your online business while you're in the right place. This is the school copy and messaging podcast. And today it gets freelancer Friday, where we help you as a freelancer ad copywriter and content marketing skills to your book of business, to up level your freelancer services, to earn more money and gain more freedom in your schedule. My name is Amber and I've been freelancing for almost 20 years as a marketing media relations and PR we are professional. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the show today, everyone. Thanks for being here as a freelancer, your income may be inconsistent. If you build a budgeting system that can sustain you.

Amber (01:55):

If your income ebbs and flows, you can run a successful business that allows you flexibility and growth, regardless of how many clients you have from one month to the next. So this is why we're talking about finances today. I'm not a financial expert, but I believe as a freelancer, we have to be prepared to manage our money when unexpected expenses arise. When we want to take time off or need to take time off and to prepare for the natural ebb and flow of business. So that's why we're talking about this today. If you learn to manage your finances in a way that prepares you for this, you don't have the added stress of finances in your business. Anybody saying amen to that? I know that I am first. I want to address that this isn't perfect and I'm always learning and adjusting how I do my finances.

Amber (02:44):

I hope it helps you create your own process so that you can run your business smoothly. So first things first, let's talk about a budget. I'm a Dave Ramsey fan. So I use his program and I just tweaked it a little to work for me. And for my situation, basically, if you're not familiar with Dave Ramsey and with his strategy, his strategy is to create what they call a zero-based budget, where you give all of your dollars a job as Dave Ramsey would say, you take all of the money that you earn and you assign it to something and you set up your budget to pay the most important expenses first. So you never have money like leftover at the end of the month because you have assigned every dollar, a job or into a category. And so that might first be your most expensive, your most important expenses, which we'll kind of talk about today, how to do this, but you assign all of those dollars, a job to the most important expenses first.

Amber (03:43):

And then as you get down your list and your budget, if you have funding leftover, you don't necessarily just leave it in, in your account. You give it a job, you assign it to a savings account, or you sign it to an expenditure account or a profit account. And so you give every dollar a job every single month with the money that is coming in and you earmark it for certain expenses. So for example, if you run out of money in a month, you paid all of your expenses, your important expenses before you spent money on coffee, let's say so that's the idea is you, you pay all of your really important expenses first, and then the things that aren't as important like coffee. Although I don't know y'all I would maybe argue coffee needs to be towards the top. Just kidding. But you get the idea.

Amber (04:32):

You pay, you know, your rent on your building. If you, if you have a building that you rent for your business, or you pay yourself and your savings account first, and you pay your internet bill first, cause you can't run an online business without internet, you pay those expenses first before you would have the money leftover for coffee. So that if you don't have the money for coffee that month that's okay, you've paid your most important expenses first. So that's the idea behind a zero-based budget and giving all of your dollars a job. If you've never heard of that concept before. So setting up a budget as a freelancer can be tricky because you may not have consistent income. At least not yet, especially if you're new, if you do have consistent income, that's a fabulous and this strategy will still apply to you. But if you don't have consistent income yet setting up a budget can be tricky, but I'm going to give you some tips here that will make it a whole lot easier.

Amber (05:26):

So start with the basics, make a list of all of the expenses in your business. Remember to include categories for paying yourself, saving for unexpected expenses and saving for taxes, list all of these in priority. For example, if you have memberships that are nice to have in your business, those would go last in your budget. If you have a category for travel or for gifts may be for, um, thank you gifts that you send people who refer you or existing clients after you finish a job for them, those kind of things that you buy as a thank you to your clients. Those would go last, the top priorities are paying yourself, paying your taxes and paying your savings account and these things that are required to run your business like your rent or your website or your internet. Those are the most important priorities. Paying yourself, paying your taxes, having savings, and then paying the things that are required to run your business that you absolutely cannot live without.

Amber (06:30):

Now, when you make these decisions about putting those things in priority list, you guys, the things that you can't live without are not the nice to haves, right? This has to be an analysis of what you absolutely cannot run your business without. Those are the things that go with the very, very top of your list. Now there's different ways to do this. You guys, um, my way is not the only right way. I think you guys know from listening to the show that I, I feel that way about everything, right? There's just not one way to do something. Well, let me, let me take that back there because I'm a Christian, there is one way to get to heaven. And that is to believe that Jesus Christ is your savior because, because the Lord said there's only one way to get to, to get to heaven.

Amber (07:18):

And that is to believe in his son, Jesus Christ, and that he died on the cross for you so that there is one way to do that. But that is the only thing that I think that there is one way to do everything else. There are multiple ways to do, and you can find the way that works for you. I hope that today's information is helpful in building your budget. And you may take some things here and you may not use other things and that's okay. You need to build what works for you and for your business. But I hope that you'll find some value in learning how I set mine up. So maybe it can help you set up your budget as well. So there is not one way to do this, but think about the priorities you have in your business and the things that you absolutely have to have.

Amber (08:01):

I would recommend that those go first, every month, that you pay money to those things first so that you make sure every month you can cover your most important expenses. And then if you have money leftover for things like coffee, or thank you gifts to your clients, great. But if you don't have the money for those things one month, then that's okay, because you've covered your most expensive, excuse me, your most important expenses. So list those things out in priority so that you make sure, you know, what are the most important things to pay every single month? Think about absolutely everything that you want in your business, make a list and then prioritize that list, add it all into your budget. So you may have months where you can't fund everything, but on the months where you can you'll have a fund ready for it.

Amber (08:47):

So you may have a whole list. In some months, you may get halfway through that list. Other months, you may get all the way through the list. Other months, you may only through your top priority. So this way you've got it all built out though. And you've got the funds available in your account that we're going to talk about so that when you have the money to put into those accounts, you can. So the reason that you set it up this way is that you have, if you have income that ebbs and flows, you may need to pull from some of your accounts to cover some of those important expenses. So an example of this, and we're going to talk about some of the things, some of the accounts to have. If you set it up this way, have a savings account where one month, if your bills are due and you don't have enough income coming in from clients, you may have to pull from your savings account that month, other months, you're going to be putting money into your savings account because you've got enough client work coming in.

Amber (09:46):

And so that's how you can set it up, where even if your income ebbs and flows, you've got the ability to pull from your savings when you need to in your business to cover those important expenses. And then you have a process to put that money back into savings on months where you have enough income coming in. So it may take you three or four months of doing this. And especially if you're new at this and you don't have a budget or a process, yet it may take you three or four months of kind of trial and error to figure out what exactly your budget needs to look like, how much you need to budget for everything. If you haven't done this yet. And it may also take you some time to really figure out and hone in what are those most expensive, most important expenses that you need to have at the top of your budget.

Amber (10:31):

So doing your budget does not have to be fancy. You can use an Excel spreadsheet to rank your expenses. In order of priority, you can write it down on a piece of paper in your notebook, or you can use software. Something like QuickBooks. The two programs that I recommend are every dollar by Dave Ramsey. And YNAB, Y N A B, which stands for you need a budget, which is the perfect name for budgeting. So I'm going to link both of those in the show notes. Um, I am not an affiliate of either one of those. Um, YNAB does have like a, I think I get a free month or something, but it's not an affiliate program and I'm not an affiliate of Dave Ramsey or the Everett every dollar program. Um, so no, no affiliate. I just love these two programs, every dollar and why not?

Amber (11:22):

Now the one that I use the most consistently in my business is YNAB, I love how, YNAB is set up because they have a way where you can save for future months and future expenses. And I just liked the interface a lot. I like that I can earmark funds that are in an account by category. So for example, in my savings account in YNAB, I can earmark money for taxes and I can earmark money for an emergency fund. And I can earmark money for, you know, a purchase saving for like a new computer or a membership, or course that I want to take in the future. This allows me to save for those expenses without having multiple accounts. Now, please hear me here, please hear me. If you want to have multiple accounts, you should go for it, go for it, go for it, go for it.

Amber (12:13):

I know a lot of programs recommend this. If you are a, a believer or reader or whatever you want to call it of profit first, um, I love profit first and I've, it's a concept that I'm learning. Um, and they recommend that you have a lot of different accounts to put things in. I think that's great. If you want to do that personally, where I am at in my business, I just don't have the time to manage multiple accounts. And I prefer to not have multiple accounts here. Me again, you guys, there's not a right or wrong way to do this. You need to find the way that works for you and the way to figure out what is going to work for you is to try it. So for me personally, I don't like having too many accounts. I typically have to have a checking account and I have a savings account for my business within that savings account.

Amber (13:01):

I use YNAB to earmark the money that's in my savings account, and I will put it into a category. So I've got a tax savings, earmark, I've got, um, purchases that I want to save for. And then I've also got like fun things that I want to save for it. Those are in my savings account. Um, and then I've also got an emergency fund for my business within that savings account. And I earmark all of those within why NAB, so I can see the total in that account. But then under that total, I kind of know which amounts are earmarked for what? So I don't just look at that account and go, oh, I've got, you know, $5,000. I can look at that account and say, okay, I have $5,000, but I can't use it because that's earmarked for other savings or for other taxes or things like that.

Amber (13:52):

And so I like having one account and I like using YNAB, because I can earmark within that account, what things I'm saving for. So their platform works really, really well for me. I know many programs recommend that you have different accounts, and if you want to do that, like I said, you know, you should do that. It's a great way to do it. But for me, I just don't want to maintain that many accounts, at least on, at this point in my business, maybe that will change some day. Uh, but right now that's not my thing. Um, I don't have time to keep track, uh, or reconcile more of those accounts. Uh, maybe in the future, if I hire a bookkeeper or something and they can help me, um, that would be a benefit. But for right now, it works for me to just have two accounts.

Amber (14:34):

Um, if you are not very disciplined though, and you would like, if you feel like you would have a hard time with not touching funds that are in a savings account that were earmarked for like taxes or, you know, for an emergency fund, then you may want to set up different accounts. You just have like you have access to, but only in the case of an emergency or something. Um, so if you are, if you are not as disciplined, having multiple accounts might be a better way for you to do this. If you are disciplined and you know that you can leave that money alone, then you may want to do it with only one or two accounts and earmark funds within those accounts. So you have to figure out what fits you and your situation best. Um, let's quickly while we're talking about this address, the idea of credit cards, um, because if you're a fellow Dave Ramsey follower, you've, you probably understand the concept that Dave Ramsey does not recommend that you use credit cards.

Amber (15:29):

I know a lot of business owners who do use credit cards. I personally think it's a, you know, it's a personal choice. I don't use credit cards in my business, um, because I just have found that it's better for me not to, but for those of you who do great, I think it's wonderful as long as you paid off every month and you're not going into debt. Um, why NAB? Another thing I like about it is they have a really cool function where you can actually create an account for your credit card. If you do use one and you can earmark funds out of your checking account and into that credit card account, just to kind of put it aside so that, you know, you know, if you charge, um, let's say a thousand dollars on your credit card, you can instantly take it out of your checking account and put it towards the card so that you've got it ready when that credit card is due and you can pay it off every month.

Amber (16:21):

It just kind of helps you with keeping your budget set, knowing what you've put on your credit card and what you need to pay. And so that's another reason I really love why NAB is if you are using credit cards, the functionality that they have in the system to help you keep track of that is, is really cool. So personally, I don't use credit cards in my business. It's just a personal choice. I use my checking account and my debit card. But if you are somebody who uses credit cards, why Nam has a really great feature that can help make sure you can budget still with your credit card as well. So that's really cool. So, um, that way you can pay that bill easily every month when the bill comes and you've already got the funds earmarked for it, which I love. So whether you use a program or something like Excel, have a budget that ranks your expenses in order of priority, as you earn money each month, first fund your most important expenses, and then your unimportant expenses get funded last.

Amber (17:17):

So that's as Dave Ramsey calls a zero-based budget where you give every dollar a job. So shout out today, Ramsey, because I do love his, his programs, and I've been a fan of his for many years and I've read all of his books. So let's talk about how to deal with inconsistent income. Because as a freelancer, you may naturally have inconsistent income, especially if you're new. So first I recommend as a freelancer, have a six month emergency fund for your business and for your personal expenses. Now you guys don't turn me off. Don't don't hit stop right now. Listen, hear me out, hear me out. Um, I know that you may take, it may take you some time to get to this point. It took me a long time to get to this point. So the reason I recommend this though, is if you have six months of an emergency fund for your business and six months of an emergency fund for your personal accounts, that will help you.

Amber (18:16):

When you have months where your business doesn't make as much money, that you're not dipping into your personal savings account to cover your business expenses. This will allow you to have funds available in your business to pull from if you need it on months where you don't have as many clients. The other reason I like this is, is the exact opposite. If you have personal expenses, you have six months emergency fund for personal expenses. You're also not dipping into personal to pay for your business. You're not dipping into business to pay for your personal et cetera. So the reason that you need both is so that you don't have to pull from those accounts to pay for the other. Does that make sense? So from your business emergency fund, you can pull business expenses when you need it from your personal emergency fund, you can pull for those personal expenses when you need it.

Amber (19:06):

So you don't want to pull from your business when you have money leftover to cover emergencies on your personal or vice versa, unless you absolutely have to having an emergency fund will help give you a buffer when you need it on both your personal and your business expenses. So let's talk for a second about how do you start to build up that emergency fund? Because I know it can seem daunting when you talk about six months. For those of you, especially who have a family, six months of expenses, you know, is going to be a large amount and I get that. And so it can seem daunting. So let's talk about how you get there. First of all, you get there one step at a time, one step at a time don't, don't be overwhelmed. It doesn't have to happen tomorrow. It's a, it can be a long-term goal.

Amber (19:54):

One step at a time. The second thing I recommend is until you have those emergency funds, and again, this is a Dave Ramsey principle. So if you haven't heard of Dave Ramsey or read his books, go check him out on LinkedIn, link him in the show notes. Um, the first thing you can do is first one, take it one day at a time. The second is don't fund any unnecessary expenses until you have an emergency fund in place. So things like gifts for clients to thank, to say, thank you for working with me or thank you for this referral. Those are not important expenses right now until you have an emergency fund in place and things like, you know, going out for coffee, those are not necessary expenses until you have six months of an emergency fund. Those things should not currently be in your budget.

Amber (20:42):

So look at your budget. Once you get it written out, are there things that are not necessary that you can cut out so that you can spend all of your time and money funding, that emergency fund until you get that in place? That is a number one top priority is start putting some funds away so that you've got it when you need it. So that if you have months where you just don't have the income, or you don't want to work, if you want to take a vacation, you've got the funds built up where you don't have to worry about your business because you've got an emergency fund or you've got vacation funds set up, so you can take some time off. So let's talk about some other things you can do to build up that emergency fund. Uh, you can run a sale or a promotion in your business.

Amber (21:26):

This can be especially effective for calling past clients and offering a discounted service. You guys like if you've got past clients, call them and say, Hey, I'm running a special right now on, you know, because you're an existing client, you get your next web page 50% off, or I'm running a special where I will write six months of content for you. At 20% off, it can be a discount to existing customers that you can go back and offer and get quick cash influx into your business to save that emergency fund. This can also be a VIP day running a VIP day, either for past clients or for new clients. Can you set aside a day and do two or three projects for one client very quickly that you can charge a premium for on a VIP day? Um, if you've got a client, you know, reach out to them, what else are you struggling with in your business that I can help you with?

Amber (22:22):

Um, you know, maybe you've got somebody who you're doing social media management for, and you contact them. And they're like, well, let's see, I'm trying to set up a workflow right now in dub Sato. And I haven't had time to get to it if you know how to use dub Sato, can you, can you set that up in like a day in charge of VIP day to get that done? Think outside the box, think outside of your normal packages and offerings that you have in your business, get a little bit creative. What can you offer as a VIP day that could get a quick influx of cash into your business that can help you set up this emergency fund? Okay. Uh, another thing is a discount for an upsell. Like if you've got somebody who's purchasing, um, you know, doing a homepage website, copy for their homepage, can you also say great because you're hiring me to do this.

Amber (23:12):

I will also do your about me page. If you would allow me to, I'll give you a 20% discount on that. If I can do bowls, something that you can quickly get extra money in the door. Um, another thing you can do is think about supplementing with a course or a membership. And so this is kind of a little bit more of a longer term play. Uh, but if you've got an existing business set up one way that you could add some additional funds to your business to start building up that emergency fund is can you create a course and can, or a membership that could start bringing in some additional money? Now this doesn't have to be a big deal. You guys doesn't have to be an 18 module six month course. It doesn't have to be a huge membership. Think smaller to just get an influx of cash into your business.

Amber (23:54):

I'm mentioning this because this is something I'm working on. Um, something like, you know, how to, how to create six days of social media captions in an hour. I don't even know I'm just making that up, but that might be a quick course. It might be one hour and you charge $47 for it. And you can start, you know, put up a, you don't even have to spend money to market it, create a pin, put it on Pinterest, start driving traffic to it. You may sell 10 of them. I don't know. Um, another thing you can do a membership. If you, if you can look at your business, this is more for existing businesses. If you can look at your business and consistently see you are offering a certain thing to a lot of your clients, can you automate that? Is there a way that you can have like 37 or $47 a month membership and you set a time each month where, you know, you're spending a certain amount of hours for those members to teach them something or to provide templates for them.

Amber (24:51):

Templates are really great for freelancers to have as a membership offer. So think outside of the box, can you add something to your business that doesn't take you a bunch of additional time that might give you an influx of cash to help build up that emergency fund or bring you more consistent income, consider setting up a monthly or quarterly pricing option a, I mentioning this again, because this is something I'm working on. Uh, I'm change currently changing the packages that I offer in my business. And I'm moving to more of a quarterly or monthly pricing option for my coaching services, because when you do one and done, like one-on-one hire me for an hour coaching, it can be sporadic. And so one thing I'm moving to in my business, I have a lot of people who have approached me for coaching recently on creating their message.

Amber (25:39):

And they're asking for, you know, well, do you have a package of like three or four coaching sessions I can buy that saved me money. I didn't have that. But once I saw there was a need for it, I'm like, okay, I'm going to create it. And so the other benefit I saw to that after I started creating that is, well, that also gives me more consistent income. So if somebody hires me for a month of coaching, I know I've got a month worth of coaching payments coming in versus just one coaching session here and there. And that's something new to me. I hadn't considered that in my business. Um, I'm kind of new to that concept. So I thought I'd mentioned it here, cause it seems to be something that is going to be helpful for me. So consider setting up some kind of a monthly or quarterly pricing option, even though those things can ebb and flow still.

Amber (26:22):

It does give you more of a time and a plan for you and your business when you're working on, you know, what income is coming in and making it a little bit more consistent. So after you have a budget set up a time to work on it weekly, and yes, I mean, weekly set up a time monthly to meet with an accountability partner who can keep you on track with your budget and who can help you make sure that you're keeping your expenses on track. This is really important. This person can also be helpful when you were considering expenses, which we're going to talk about next, but evaluate monthly expenses from the perspective of is this still working and helping me grow my business and that accountability partner can help you evaluate, is this something I should be spending money on is, is a good business choice.

Amber (27:09):

Having somebody else kind of, with an outsider's perspective can help you stay on budget and not help you not spend money on something. That's not going to be truly good for your business. This can be a spouse. It can be a sibling. It can be a friend. It can be a business accountability partner, but having somebody help you with your budget that does an outside perspective can be really nice sometimes to helping you, especially when it comes to evaluating expenses. So sometimes especially if you're a solopreneur, we don't always have someone to help us evaluate decisions about spending money. And here's a quick filter. If you want to run your expenses through this, it might help you with making financial decisions. If you're a solopreneur and you don't really have like an accountability partner that can help you with this. So five things, five things to kind of check on when you're spending money that might help you.

Amber (28:01):

Number one is, do you have the cash available to pay for this without touching your emergency fund or funds that you already have earmarked for something else? Do you have the cash available to pay for this without touching your emergency fund or funds that are earmarked for something else? Number two, do you have the next three months of expenses covered outside of your emergency fund? Now I know this may, this may sound crazy, but, um, you guys, I don't know, maybe it's because I am kind of an overthinker, maybe it's because I'm a cancer survivor and I've been through phases in my life and in my business where I had to pull from an emergency fund multiple times. And I was glad that I had it, but the way that I evaluate expenses that may not be necessary in my business. So this is something that's like in that nice to have list.

Amber (28:55):

This is the filter I go through. Do I have the cash available to pay for this without touching an emergency fund? Do I have my next three months of expenses required expenses covered outside of my emergency fund? Like I've got an emergency fund and then I know I've got the next three months of expenses that are, that are, have to have already covered things like paying for my website because I can't run my online business without my website. Things like paying for, um, Podbean, which is what hosts my podcast. So the required expenses are covered for the next three months and I have an emergency fund. Okay. Yes. Maybe I can, maybe I can pay for this thing. That's kind of nice to have next thing. Number three, will this purchase directly improve my business or save me significant time? Because sometimes the nice to haves we think we need and they don't always help us directly improve our business or save significant time.

Amber (29:51):

So that's number three, number four. Do I have something similar already that I could use instead? And maybe this expense, isn't something I need to incur. And number five, have you researched prices are better options. So this number five helps this not to be like a trigger pull expense, right? Like I'm just going to buy this. Have you researched other prices and made sure that this is a good price on whatever it is that you're actually buying. So let me run through those again. Do I have the cash available to pay for this without touching my emergency fund or funds earmarked for something else? Number two, do I have my next three months of expenses covered outside of my emergency fund, number three, will this purchase directly improve my business or save me significant time? Number four, do I have something similar already I could use instead?

Amber (30:41):

And number five, have you researched prices and made sure that this is a good price on whatever you're about to purchase? So my favorite tools for helping you stay on track with your finances in your business. Number one, QuickBooks, I love QuickBooks that keeps my funds organize my accounts organized, and I link it with my bank so I can download all of my expenses and categorize them very quickly. Uh, number two is YNAB. You need a budget is what that stands for. YNAB also links with your bank. And so you can download your expenses that you had and easily move them into your budget. And, and it's worked super simply. YNAB? Um, that's my favorite. And then, uh, Dave Ramsey is my third resource or tool in building a budget. Uh, reading his book total money makeover would be my recommendation, especially if you're not familiar with him and his platform.

Amber (31:36):

Um, total money makeover will give you a really good picture of the Dave Ramsey program and some of the things that I've talked about today. So I'm going to link those in the show notes for you. Um, next build a financial plan that fits your business and your life. So the reason I want to spend a little bit of time talking about this is I think it's important as freelancers, that we don't just build a budget that supports our business, but also supports our life because you want to be able to enjoy life, right? That's why we're running a business. That's why we're entrepreneurs is you want to be able to, I'm guessing have a schedule that you maintain yourself and you can go work on the beach if you want, or, you know, sit outside by a lake and work on your computer. If you want, or take a month off around the holidays with your children, if you want, those are the things that you need to build a budget that supports so that you can do the things in your life that give you the freedom of why you started your business in the first time.

Amber (32:36):

But you have to build a financial plan that can get you there. So let's talk about a couple things. If you have products that you need to purchase in your business, when you build your pineapple plan, when you get paid from a customer, you need to be setting aside money that pays for the next product. You have to order in addition to your own profit and your operating expenses in your business. So when you get paid, you have to put money aside for all of the things in your business that you need like that like purchasing more products, paying yourself and operating your business, but also build in fun. This may be travel. You may have a fund in your business that funds a vacation that you want to take, or it may be a fund. Um, like I have for buying books that I want to read or courses that I want to take, and I saved money for those things slowly so that I know when it gets to that point in my business, I've got the money to pay for those things.

Amber (33:32):

If I decide to buy them, I also build in time off so I can take time off without financial restraint. So if you know, you want to take a month off around the holidays and your business, you've got a savings account to support you during that month. When you maybe don't have client income coming in this also could include a growth fund that allows you to grow your business. Like if, you know, eventually you want to start hiring some people in your business, or there's a piece of software you want to buy that would help you in your business. You can start saving money for things that would help you grow in your business. So having a growth fund or a fun fund, or an educational fund or products that you want to add, having funds like that set aside, that you can slowly save money for who helps support not only your business, but also your lifestyle.

Amber (34:23):

So this allows you to stay flexible with your process that allows you to change and grow as your business changes and grows. And those things can allow you the flexibility in your business to support your business and support the life that you want to live. So stay flexible with this. You guys, it doesn't have to be the way exactly that I do it. You can come up with your own way that fits for you and fits for your business. The most important thing I want to leave you with today is just to have a budget and to have an emergency fund for your business. Think about those things we went through. As you evaluate expenses, to make sure it's expense that you really need having an emergency fund. How do you get there doing something like a VIP day or adding an upsell? Those kinds of things can help you get there.

Amber (35:08):

Once you have an emergency fund in your business, you've got some more flexibility to start saving for the other things that you may want to have in the future. And you've got a buffer that way you can start saving for things like a vacation or saving for taking time off. Once, you know, you've got your emergency fund put into place. And then if your business ebbs and flows one month, you've got a lot of clients. The next month may be a donor. You can support that ebb and flow of your freelancer business. So the number one thing you guys is just have a budget. First of all, that you can pay your most important expenses. First, then have a process where you can pay the rest of your expenses when you have the money and save for your business so that you can sustain those months, that maybe you don't have as many clients.

Amber (35:53):

Very basic, very, very basic. So I'm gonna put in the show notes, some of the resources I gave you today, I hope this was flexible and feels like you can fit it into your own business and your own life. And if you found this valuable, will you do me a favor where you screenshot this episode and share it to your Instagram stories? I would be so grateful. And don't forget if you share the show and then you also send me a message and tell me what you do. I will give you a shout-out on the show, so please share it. I would sure appreciate it. And I hope you found value in this episode until next time, go share your unique message with the world. Thanks for listening today, friends and spending a piece of your day with me to get more information on my copywriting and content marketing and messaging services. Go to Amberglus.com. You can also learn more on Instagram with me at @amberglus until next time go share your unique message with the world.