Plan for sick days

When you go 1099 and you get sick and have to stay home, you may feel like you're "losing money" because you're not billing hours.

It's true, you aren't making money. Your sick days are self funded.

But the key to not feeling bad about it is to plan for it.

There are about 2000 working hours per year if you take out federal holidays.

Just bake in a week (or maybe two weeks in the COVID era) work of sick days when you're doing your financial planning.

This means you'll actually have 2000 - 40 = 1960 working hours left.

If you then think you'll take four weeks of vacation (160 hours) and another week for miscellaneous stuff that comes up (40 hours), you're left with 1960 - 160 - 40 = 1760 hours

Multiply that by your billable rate and you have an annual revenue target you can plan your finances around.

Many "unexpected" events are predictable. You know you'll get sick or your kids will get sick. You'll know you have to take a day off to get your car repaired. You know you'll need a personal day just because.

You may not know exactly when they will happen, but you know they'll happen.

So plan for it, and you can actually enjoy your sick day instead of thinking everything minute you're watching Netflix at home is money out of your pocket.

Want the full playbook? Check out Going 1099.