FFreelanceGuide

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How much work is your income goal?

"I want to make $120k" is a wish until you know what it costs in work. This is the flip side of the rate calculator: pick the yearly billings you're aiming for, tell it what you charge, and see exactly how many projects — or billable hours — that means every year, month, and week.

Your goal
$
The revenue you want to bill in a year. Want a take-home number instead? Run it through the rate calculator first, then bring the billings figure here.
6 weeks (46 working)
Vacation, holidays, and sick days. The weeks you work have to cover the weeks you don't.
How you charge
You price whole projects — get the number of projects you need to land. You bill by the hour — get the billable hours you need to log.
$
What a typical project or client engagement pays you. Use a realistic average across your range.
hrs
Roughly how many hours a typical project takes. Add it for a reality check: the calculator works out how many billable hours a week the plan really needs. Leave at 0 to skip.
You need to land
40projects / yr

Per month
Per working week

Nothing you type leaves your browser. This isn't financial advice — it's a planning estimate to pressure-test a goal against a real week.

How to turn an income goal into a real plan

Most income goals die quietly because they never get translated into work. "$120,000" feels motivating, but it doesn't tell you what to do on Monday. The fix is simple division: take the revenue you want to bill in a year and divide it by what you charge. If you price by the project, you get the number of projects you need to win; if you bill by the hour, you get the billable hours you need to log.

projects per year = income goal ÷ average project value
billable hours per year = income goal ÷ hourly rate
per working week = yearly total ÷ (52 − weeks off)

The weekly number is where goals get honest. Spreading $120,000 over a 46-week working year is about $2,609 a week — every week you take off has to be funded by the ones you work, which is why the calculator divides by working weeks, not all 52. Drag the "weeks off" slider and watch the weekly load climb: that's the real cost of time away when no one is paying you to take it.

The billable-hours reality check

A plan can be arithmetically correct and still impossible. Add an estimate of how many hours a typical project takes and the calculator cross-multiplies it into billable hours per week — the single number that tells you whether the goal fits a human week. A 40-hour week rarely holds 40 billable hours once you subtract selling, admin, and email, so most freelancers sustainably bill 25–35. If the plan needs 60, the goal isn't wrong — your price is too low. Raising your rate or your project value is almost always easier than finding more hours, and it's the lever this tool is designed to make obvious.

Frequently asked questions

Should my income goal be take-home pay or total billings?

This calculator works in billings — the revenue you invoice before taxes and business expenses. If you're starting from the take-home you want to keep, run that through the rate calculator first: it grosses your target up for taxes, expenses, and a safety margin into the revenue you actually need to bill. Bring that billings number here to see the workload it implies.

Why divide by working weeks instead of 52?

Because you don't earn during the weeks you take off. If you work 46 weeks and rest 6, all of your annual billings have to come from those 46 weeks — so your weekly target is the goal divided by 46, not 52. Treating every week as a working week quietly understates how much you need to bill while you're actually at your desk.

What if the plan needs more hours than a week holds?

That's the most useful answer the tool gives. If hitting your goal requires more billable hours than you can realistically work, the goal isn't unreasonable — your rate or project price is too low to support it. The fix is to charge more, not to work more. Bump your project value or hourly rate and watch the required hours drop back into a sane range.

My projects vary a lot in size. What do I enter?

Use a realistic average. If your work splits into a few clear tiers, run the calculator once per tier to see the workload each one implies, or enter a blended average project value weighted toward the kind of work you actually want more of. The point isn't a precise forecast — it's a clear-eyed sense of how many "yeses" the year requires.

Is my information saved anywhere?

No. Every calculation runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is sent to a server or stored. The link in your address bar updates so you can bookmark or share a scenario, but it only contains the numbers and mode you chose.

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