Show HN: Tool for freelancers to calculate how much money to set aside

[probst]

After having been a regular employee for years, I worked as a freelancer for a while. Going into my freelancing life I had no real mental model for how much of the money I earned was truly mine to spend, and how much of it I needed to set aside for taxes, vacations, retirement, and in case I got sick. I modelled this in Excel as best I could and was quite surprised both by how complicated it was to get right, and how much money I actually needed to set aside!

As my girlfriend also started freelancing last year, I decided to turn my Excel sheet into a little program she could use too, and in the spirit of sharing and helping others I would hereby like to make it available to you all too :)

My biggest take-away so far has been that most people dramatically underestimate how much they need to set aside, and forget to plan adequately for getting sick and for retirement.

You can find the tool here: https://howmuch.probsteide.com/

Comments, questions, and suggestions are more than welcome!

I wish you all a happy Easter Weekend!

In case you skipped to the bottom: you can find the tool at https://howmuch.probsteide.com/

[tomelliot]

Cool tool, thanks for sharing!

I did the same thing with building something in excel - I didn't think as hard about the retirement portion though and just matched it to my previous pension contributions from when I was employed, so that's a great addition.

One thing I have in my sheet that I find helpful: A comparison with an equivalent annual salary at an employer. For example I have a day rate that is a rough approximation to match the annual salary I'd like to have if I were employed by someone - taking into account that the day rate needs to include sick days, holidays, the employer's share of insurance and pension contributions that I now pay etc.

[probst]

Yeah, that is a great idea! I tried building something like that, but didn't quite get it right. Maybe I should give it a second go.

I have also thought about adding a feature whereby you can ask the equivalent of "I would like to be able to pay myself X per month" and then be told how much you would need to bill per month. In a way it's the inverse of what the tool does today.

[FloNeu]

My formula was 50% (of every deal - set aside for taxes and social security (that includes pension) - 25% savings/rainy-day-funds, 25% spending money... Keept my bacon alive until now. Even when pandemic beginning in my 3rd year would probably not have been survived without state funds (as it cost me work that would have been planned to last most of the year)

[probst]

Thank you for sharing! That is even more strict than what my tool calculates, as in 75% set aside for the future. The exact numbers likely also depend on where you reside, and how much of a social security net exists to catch you when things don't go as planned.

[zaSmilingIdiot]

Offtopic: For interest, there seems to be an issue clearing/deleting values from inputs. Ar least on mobile anyway. The last digit is never visibly removed and appears to still be considered a part of thr input value.

Also, decimal input fields(such as TER) do not seem to accept any decimal character input

[probst]

The problem has now been fixed. Fields can be emptied properly, and the TER (decimal values) are editable too!

Thanks again!

[probst]

You are absolutely right! Thanks for letting me know! I’ll look into it when I get home!