Free income goal calculator
This free income goal calculator runs the rate question backwards. Give it the income you want to keep and the rate you already charge, and it returns the number that decides your year: the revenue your clients must actually pay you. Keeping $60,000, with $5,000 of expenses and a 25% tax reserve, means billing $86,667 — at $95 an hour that is 912.3 billable hours, 19 in each working week. Then it checks the goal against the billable hours you genuinely have — and if the goal does not fit, it names the rate that would make it fit.
Set the goal
No rate yet — or one you no longer trust? Set it first with the hourly rate calculator; on this device, that rate is then prefilled here. If your expenses figure is a guess, our freelance expenses checklist turns the full list — software, hardware, payment fees, insurance, training — into one honest annual number to put in the box above.
Your year, in billings
The revenue your clients must pay you across the year — your invoices added up — so that after the tax reserve and the expenses come out, the goal income is what is left.
| Take-home income goal | $0.00 |
| Annual business expenses | $0.00 |
| Goal + expenses (what the year must cover) | $0.00 |
| Required billed revenue | $0.00 |
| Billable hours needed | 0 |
| Average billed revenue per month | $0.00 |
| Billable hours per month (average) | 0 |
| Billable hours per working week | 0 |
| Working weeks (after vacation) | 0 |
| Your billable capacity (hours you can sell) | 0 |
Enter your goal and your rate, and this line checks the goal against the billable hours you actually have.
Worked example
A freelancer who wants to keep $60,000, charges $95 an hour, runs $5,000 of annual expenses, reserves 25% for tax, takes four weeks off, works 40-hour weeks and bills 60% of them. Enter those numbers above and the calculator returns exactly this:
| Take-home goal | $60,000.00 |
| Annual expenses | $5,000.00 |
| Goal + expenses | $65,000.00 |
| Required billed revenue (25% tax reserve) | $86,666.67 |
| Billable hours needed at $95/hr | 912.3 |
| Average billed revenue per month | $7,222.22 |
| Billable hours per month (average) | 76 |
| Billable hours per working week | 19 |
| Billable capacity (48 weeks × 40 hours × 60%) | 1,152 |
| Feasibility | Fits — 79.2% of capacity, 239.7 hours of headroom |
Read the shape of it. The goal asks nothing heroic — 19 billable hours in a working week is a pace with room around it. But it is unforgiving in one specific way: the year needs $86,667 of invoiced work, not $60,000 of it. Freelancers who plan from the take-home figure alone under-bill by the tax and the expenses, and discover it in December. Run your own version with the rate you actually charge: the same goal at $50 an hour needs 1,733.3 billable hours against a capacity of 1,152 — a shortfall of 581.3 hours — and the calculator names the fix: at $75.23 an hour the goal fits exactly.
How the number works
- Start from what you keep. The goal is take-home money — the amount that stays yours after tax and expenses. That is the only honest starting point, because a goal that forgets either of them is not a goal, it is a hope.
- Add the year's expenses. Clients pay for these too: software, hardware, payment fees, insurance, training. If the figure is a guess, build it properly first with our freelance expenses checklist.
- Gross it up for tax. Divide by one minus your tax reserve — at 25%, divide by 0.75. This is exactly the build-up the hourly rate calculator uses to reach its "grossed" figure: goal plus expenses, divided by (1 − tax).
- There is no margin step — on purpose. The rate calculator adds a profit margin after grossing up, because it is setting a price and a price needs a cushion. This calculator plans the billings a goal requires, so it stops at the grossed figure. The margin lives in your rate, not in the target — counting it twice would inflate the goal.
- Turn revenue into hours. Divide the required revenue by the rate you charge. That is the year of selling, in one number — and dividing it by 12 and by your working weeks gives the monthly and weekly rhythm it demands.
- Check the hours against your capacity. Capacity is (52 − vacation weeks) × hours per week × billable share. If the hours needed exceed it, the honest answers are a higher rate, a higher billable share, or a smaller goal — the missing hours do not exist. If the answer says the rate has to move, our guide to raising your rates covers the conversation.
Set a rate from a goal with the hourly rate calculator; check a goal against the rate you already charge here. And when the goal needs a year of billings, the next steps are the same chain this site is built on: the proposal that wins the work, the invoice that bills it, and the payment emails that collect it.