How to keep track of your finances as a freelancer! 💵

A few months ago, after my 4-year startup failed, I needed to find a new way to make money. Welcome to freelancing! 🙌

I can show you the world, shining, shimmering, splendid...

Just kidding, it's a little bit dirtier. Perhaps this is a better visualization:

Anyway, let's get back on track!

For a long time, I believed that doing finances is something that is very tedious and takes a lot of time. Heck, you shouldn't even bother until you make a lot of money! I thought to myself...

Well, it's not true at all!

One person that changed my perspective was Ran Segall in one of his amazing videos.

I understood that even if you are just starting out in your freelance career, it's a very good idea to keep track of your finances as this will differentiate you from an average freelancer to one that takes his business seriously and thinks long-term!

Next, I tried to search for resources on how to actually keep track of my finances. I came across Kyle Prinsloo - @studywebdevelopment who does an amazing job of educating people on how to do freelancing the right way. He also has a youtube channel which in my opinion is undervalued (make sure to check him out!).

A good starting point is to create a spreadsheet where you keep track of your income and expenses monthly. Make sure to not overcomplicate this step as you want your spreadsheet to work for you, not the over way around!

And this is what motivated me to create my own spreadsheet, it's basically a very close version of what Kyle demonstrated in his video, but simplified and adapted to my needs:

If you would like to use this spreadsheet, you can get access to it for FREE at this link.

Here are a few things you need to know in order to use this spreadsheet:

1. Watch Kyle's video where he demonstrates his spreadsheet as this is a very close version of his.
2. You should change only the values in the blue fields.
3. You need to indicate an opening balance in one of the months in the actual column, once done, the future months will change accordingly.
4. The month indicator will change automatically based on the current month.

I hope you will make use of this spreadsheet as for me it's quite useful. You can also add comments in the Google Spreadsheet if something is unclear, I will do my best to reply to you!

Good luck and have fun with your finances!

That's it for today friends! I will go ahead and enjoy my weekend. See you next week! 😊

p.s 🤫 I recently started a podcast called The Anxious Developer where I share my knowledge on how to reduce your stress, become more present and productive as a Developer. I would love to hear your thoughts on it! 😊

Remember, you are worthy, you are loved and you matter! Have a great day! ❤️