Saving advice is written for people with a payslip. Set aside 20% on the 1st, automate it, forget it. With irregular income, sometimes nothing arrives on the 1st, and the next month twice as much does. The method has to absorb that. This one does it with a buffer account and percentages instead of amounts.
Add up what you actually spend in a normal month: housing, food, utilities, transport, insurance, the autónomo quota and what you set aside for tax. That is your baseline month. It is the figure you must cover no matter what. If you do not know it, look at the last three months of statements and average the fixed expenses.
Everything you earn lands in the business account. From there you transfer the same amount to your personal account each month, your salary, even when more came in. What is left stays in the business account as a buffer for months when less arrives. This way your personal life has a payslip even if your business does not.
Every time an invoice is paid, split it by percentages: all the IVA to the reserve account, 20% of the base minus withholding there too, and a fixed percentage (say 10% of the base) to savings. Because they are percentages, they adapt to the size of the month on their own. An 800 € month sets aside little, a 5,000 € month sets aside a lot, and you decide nothing.
With a salary, three months of emergency fund is the usual advice. With irregular income, six. It is not for medical emergencies: it is for the client who pays at 90 days, for August and for the project that falls through. It is sized on your baseline month and lives outside the accounts you look at daily.
Almost every activity has high and low months. If you build websites, December is slow. If you do tax work, August is. Look at your income by month over the last two years and the pattern appears. Knowing that November usually brings double what January does, November's surplus is not a bonus: it is January's salary in advance.
Collected IVA and the 20% IRPF are not savings. They are debt to Hacienda you already owe. If you count them as buffer, the quarter will take them. That is why the tax reserve account is different from the buffer account and different from the emergency fund. Three accounts, three different questions.
Fider shows your freelance wallet with the quarter's accumulated IVA and the estimated 130, so the balance you see already excludes what is not yours. Savings goals carry a date and tell you how much is missing each month. And recurring transactions show how much of the month is already committed before it starts.
Between three and six months of your baseline month, closer to six if your income varies a lot or you get paid at 60 or 90 days.
Transfer a fixed amount from the business account to the personal one each month. The surplus in good months covers the slow ones.
With irregular income, a percentage of each invoice. It adapts to the size of the month on its own and requires no decisions.
No. It is Hacienda's money passing through your account. Keep it in a reserve account separate from the emergency fund.
Look at income by month over the last two years. The pattern nearly always repeats and lets you plan the buffer.
Set aside tax by percentage, keep your salary fixed and leave the rest in the buffer account. It is a future slow month's salary.
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