How to Financially Stay Afloat Between Writing Projects

Surviving a writing slump can be challenging. Getting paid by the word or the project hardly equates to a steady flow of income.

This means it’s important for writers to properly manage their finances in order to ensure that they’re ready to stay financially afloat in between writing projects. Here are a few tips and tools that you can use to set yourself up to survive during your next dry spell.

Start with a Budget

A budget is ground zero for healthy finances. It allows you to grasp the state of your finances at any given moment.

At its most basic, a budget is simply a statement that adds up your various forms of income and contrasts it against your expenses. This can help you assess things such as:

• Your fixed expenses: These are costs like your rent or car payment that you know will happen on a regular basis.
• Your variable expenses: These are expenses such as eating out or going to the movies that can change from one month to the next.
• Your ability to save: Subtracting your expenses from your income can show you if you have any extra income to squirrel away for a rainy day (more on that in a minute).
• Your debt: A budget reveals how much money you owe and how well you’re working toward paying it off.

A budget serves as a window into your current financial status. By maintaining a budget, you equip yourself with the knowledge to prepare for any financial slumps that may occur in the future.

Find Professional Help to Get Things Set Up

If you’re concerned that your budgeting skills won’t be on the same level as your writing abilities, you’re not alone. There are millions of contractors who are left to figure out their finances on their own. 

Fortunately, there are ways that you can get help. One of these is by hiring an accountant. This may seem like something that only large corporations have access to, but the rising demand for accounting professionals doesn’t just apply to those crunching numbers for big companies.

There are many accountants and financial advisors who are, themselves, working on a contract basis. They can be hired, usually for a very modest fee, to help with things like taxes and other financial services. 

If you’re worried that your budget is sub-par, consider finding an accountant or adviser to help you out. If you hire them to do your taxes, you may even be able to ask for their input on your budget without any extra charge.

Build Up an Emergency Fund

Once you have a solid budget in place, you can begin actively preparing for your next financial slow season. This should revolve around building up an emergency fund.

An emergency fund, also known as a “rainy day fund,” is simply a lump of money that you have set aside and ready to help if your finances fall short at any given moment. This can happen for a variety of reasons.

For instance, the most obvious issue a contractor can face is running low on work. As you look for more jobs, it can take weeks and even months to get those paychecks rolling in again.

But even if you have solid clients providing a steady flow of work, your income may struggle for external reasons. 

A good example of this is the coronavirus pandemic. When that began, many businesses cut their marketing and content budgets short as they scrambled to make ends meet. This led to less work for many of their freelancers.

While the pandemic isn’t likely to repeat any time soon, an economic crisis in one form or another is certainly likely. In fact, there have been 32 different economic recessions since 1850. That means every five years, on average, the economy has gone through a severe crisis.

Having an emergency fund in place can help you weather any financial shortcomings, whether they come from your own work or an outside issue.

Staying Financially Afloat During the Slow Seasons

Writing is an incredibly fulfilling lifestyle. However, as is the case with all professions, it comes with its ups and downs. As a writer, it’s important to be ready for any significant vacillations in your income. 

Keeping an updated budget is an important starting point for this preparation. So is finding professional advice that you can trust. Once those pieces are in place, you can work to create an emergency fund that can help you stay afloat whenever your income doesn’t quite meet your living expenses.

Amanda Winstead is a writer from the Portland area with a background in communications and a passion for telling stories. After years of writing and research in college, she’s turned her focus on blogging and enjoys giving other writers and readers perspectives from her experience. Along with writing she enjoys traveling, reading, working out, and going to concerts. If you want to follow her writing journey, or even just say hi you can find her on Twitter.