The Freelancer Budget Binder: Budget Planner for Uneven Income

A budget binder designed for freelancers and the self-employed, whose income arrives unevenly.

An ordinary monthly budget assumes a monthly salary: the same amount on the same day. When what you are paid changes every month, that kind of budget stops working by the second month. This binder gives you a fixed amount to pay yourself each month, worked out from your own past income, and a budget planned against that.

How it works

• Once, to set up (about an hour). Read the first part and fill in five short worksheets. They give you four figures of your own, including a fixed amount to pay yourself every month.
• Each time a client pays you (one minute). Write the payment down and split it in four steps: money for tax, your pay, a buffer for thin months, and what is left.
• At the end of each month (twenty minutes). Pay yourself the fixed amount, fill in the monthly budget, tick off your bills and work down the month-end checklist.
• Every three months (an hour). Look back and decide whether your four figures still fit.

Every page is explained with a filled-in example before you are asked to fill in your own.

What is inside (44 pages)

• How it works: why a monthly budget fails on uneven income, where every payment goes, how to set your own tax set-aside rate, your monthly pay and your buffer, and a full year worked through month by month.
• Your budget: a monthly budget, a bill organizer with twelve months of tick boxes, a savings tracker with a 52-box challenge, and a debt tracker.
• Your income records: an income record, invoice list, client list, three-month forecast, expenses, a tax pot record, tax dates, a buffer record, a month-end checklist, a three-month review, a year chart and a year summary.
• A plain list of the words used, and a guide to the spreadsheet.

What you download

• The binder in US Letter and A4, for reading on screen.
• A fillable edition in both sizes, with a box to type in on every line.
• A white-paper print edition in both sizes, light on ink, plus a spreadsheet (.xlsx, opens in Google Sheets and Excel) that does the sums for you, in one ZIP.

Good to know

• No currency symbols on the write-in pages and no country's tax rates: it works wherever you trade. The binder tells you what to look up with your own tax authority.
• The fillable edition is made for Adobe Acrobat Reader, Chrome and Edge. The PDF does not add anything up; the spreadsheet does. Typing does not work in GoodNotes or Notability; use the print edition there and write by hand.
• Print at 100% or "actual size", not "fit to page".

This binder is for keeping records and planning how you handle money you have already earned. It is not tax, financial or accounting advice, and it makes no promise about what you will earn, save or owe.