A full-time employee knows what Friday brings: $2,100. A freelancer knows that one Friday is $8,000 and the next Friday is nothing and the Friday after that is possibly a client ghosting them. The same 50/30/20 rule that works for W-2 workers breaks instantly here. You need three extra moves.

The "lowest month" rule

Pull the last 18 months of income. Find the third-worst month (not the absolute worst — that is an outlier). Treat that number as your "salary". A designer whose last 18 months averaged $6,200 but whose third-worst was $3,100 budgets on $3,100. Everything above that goes into buffers, taxes and long-term savings, not into lifestyle.

This is psychologically hard because a $9,000 month feels like permission to upgrade. It is not. That $9k month is paying rent for the $2k month you have not had yet.

The 30% tax buffer

Freelancers in the US owe federal, state, self-employment (15.3%) and sometimes city taxes. The naive rule is 25%. The safe rule is 30%. Every invoice that clears, move 30% to a separate HYSA before you touch the rest. Label it "Taxes" and forget it exists until April.

  • $5,000 Stripe payout → $1,500 to Taxes HYSA → $3,500 usable.
  • Quarterly estimated payment comes out of Taxes HYSA.
  • Anything left in December is a genuine bonus; do not spend it until December.

Smoothing paycheques with a buffer account

The pro trick is a two-account system. Income lands in account A. You pay yourself a fixed $3,100 "salary" to account B on the 1st and 15th, regardless of what came in. Account B is your day-to-day. Account A just holds the excess and smooths the dips. Over 18 months it looks exactly like a W-2 paycheck, but you built it yourself.

Running this in Plan!

Plan! has a dedicated Income goal type, separate from Savings and Expense. This is where freelancer budgeting gets easy.

  1. Create an Income goal called "Monthly take-home target" with $3,100 (your lowest-month salary).
  2. Create a Savings goal "Tax buffer" that auto-captures 30% of every Income entry.
  3. Create a Savings goal "Smoothing fund" targeted at 3 months of salary ($9,300).
  4. When a big invoice clears, log it as income in Plan! and let the Forecast engine allocate the 30% / salary / smoothing split.
  5. Review the Income chart each month; the bars tell you how much variance you are managing.
Freelancers who pay themselves a fixed salary from a buffer account save 2.5x more per year than those who spend each payout as it lands.

Health, retirement, and the "benefits gap"

W-2 employees get health, retirement match, PTO as embedded benefits. Freelancers pay for them out of the same dollar. Budget explicitly: $500/month for health insurance, $800/month for a SEP-IRA or Solo 401(k), $200/month for "PTO" (sick days you take without invoicing). Plan! Expense goals handle each as a line item so you see the true cost of being your own boss.

Checklist

  1. Find your third-worst month in the last 18.
  2. Open a Tax HYSA; auto-move 30% of every payout.
  3. Create an Income goal in Plan! at your lowest-month number.
  4. Build a 3-month Smoothing fund as a Savings goal.
  5. Budget benefits (health, retirement, PTO) as explicit Expense goals.
  6. Review the Income chart every month-end.

Irregular income is not chaos. It is a different shape. Plan! is the only iOS app that ships an Income goal type designed for it.