Setting Financial Goals - Susie Jackson

Setting financial goals when you don't depend on your business to make ends meet

If you aren’t reliant on your business to support you financially, you might struggle to set financial goals, especially if you’re one of those people who isn’t particularly motivated by money.

Freelancers and small business owners who don’t depend on their businesses to make ends meet usually find themselves in this position when they have another source of income or support. You might not rely on your business financially if you have a separate job or if your partner earns enough to provide for you and any family you might have.

If this sounds like you and you’re finding it hard to set financial goals for your business, know that you’re not alone. I’ve been asked recently by more than one person for advice on how to go about setting financial goals when how much you’re earning doesn’t really matter.

The method I teach in Charge with Confidence focuses on making sure you’re earning enough money to cover your business expenses as well as your personal cost of living. So how does this translate when you don’t have any living expenses you need to fund through your business?

In this blog post, I’m sharing 5 things you can do to help you set financial goals if you don’t depend entirely on your business to make ends meet.

How to set financial goals for a business when you don’t need the income

1) Decide what small business success looks like to you

A good place to start is to think about what you want from your business. Why did you set it up in the first place, and what do you want to get out of it?

Your version of success will always have an impact on your business finances, which inevitably affects the financial goals you set for yourself. Understanding what success looks like to you will give you a starting point in terms of where your priorities lie. If money wasn’t the driving factor for starting your business, maybe you’re looking for full-on flexibility. Perhaps you want to earn an income while still making sure you have time for family and friends or to dedicate to other projects and causes. Ask yourself what really matters to you.

Once you’ve understood your version of success, you’ll be able to better understand how you want to develop your business in terms of the type of clients you want to be working with and how many hours you want to spend working each week.

If your number one priority is caring for children or elderly relatives, for example, you need to be looking for customers who aren’t going to place too many demands on your time. It might therefore be better to target private individuals or small business owners, who might not expect an immediate response from you, as opposed to agencies or large multinational companies.

In turn, this will give you an idea of the kind of financial goals that are right for you. Private individuals are likely to have less disposable income than larger corporations, so if you’re targeting them, it might make sense to set your financial goals a bit lower than you would if you were working with big multinationals.

2) Look at your business expenses

Once you have an idea of how far you can push your financial goals, the next step is to look at your business expenses.

You might not have personal financial needs from your business, but you will have expenses within your business, including some that you might not have thought of! If you use your personal phone for work, that’s an expense that your business should be covering. You might also have software subscriptions, courses that you take, or a coach or accountant who gives you advice. Whatever the expense, if it contributes to the development of your work, it’s a business cost and should be treated as such.

Look at all your business expenses from the last 12 months and think about how much you expect to spend on your business over the coming year. Take these business expenses as a baseline and think about how much you need to earn to break even.

3) Ask yourself what you might need in the future

Besides your business expenses, you’re likely to need some money from your business for yourself at some point in the future.

Even if you don't need to take money from your business right now, it might be a good idea to contribute to a pension for when you’re older and want to retire.

So many unexpected things can happen in life that it really does make sense to take precautions and ensure you’ll always be secure. It might not feel necessary right now, but you never know what the future holds.

I always encourage my mentees to set aside money for retirement, whether that’s in the form of a pension or investing in property. If you never need that money, then great; you’ll end up with extra pocket money. But what happens if you do need that money and it’s not there?

Think about how much you would like to put towards saving for retirement each year and add this amount to your financial goal.

4) Consider your personal goals and aspirations

Is there anything you might like to have funds for, either personally or for your family, that isn’t normally covered by your other source of income or support? For example, would you like to set money aside to spend on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday, to buy property, to invest in a hobby or to save for your child’s education?

If you have any personal goals that you’d like to achieve and that require a financial contribution on your part, you can include them in your financial goals for your business. All you have to do is estimate the total cost and break it down over however many months you’d like to give yourself to earn that amount.

Having a long-term vision can really help you get motivated by the money coming into your business. At the end of the day, if you know what you’re working towards and you have a tangible goal in mind, it makes it far easier for you to achieve it! Don’t forget that our businesses are there to help us realise our personal goals too.

5) Think about your values

We can also use our values not just to guide our businesses but to help us set our financial goals as well.

Make sure you know what your values are, and then ask yourself if you’d like to support them financially. Is there a charity that you would love to be able to donate to on a regular basis, and could you do that via the money you earn in your business?

For example, if one of your values is sustainability, perhaps you could consider donating to an environmental charity. Or if being kind is the foundation for everything you do, you might like to contribute to a charitable cause that promotes acts of kindness.

Your business offers you an opportunity to set aside money for anything that matters to you as an individual. To set your financial goals, all you have to do is equate what’s important to you with a monetary figure you can work towards.

Once you’ve understood how much you need to make to cover or contribute to all of the above, you can break that figure down into a minimum hourly rate you need to be earning to achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself in your business.

If you don’t depend on your business for money, I hope these ideas have helped you feel more motivated to set financial goals and work towards something concrete. If you’d like some help to go about setting those goals and understanding what your minimum hourly rate should be in order to achieve them, you might be interested in Charge with Confidence. During the programme, I’ll help you identify your financial goals so you can break them down into targets you can work towards.

Find out more about Charge with Confidence