The Get Paid Kit · Planning

Free income smoothing calculator

Freelance income arrives in lumps; rent doesn’t. One month pays $7,000, the next $1,900, and spending that follows the lumps is a feast-and-famine cycle with extra steps. The alternative is a salary you pay yourself: a fixed monthly draw, sized from your real average income — after the tax set-aside has been skimmed — and held up by a buffer that absorbs the thin months. The salary is a fiction, but it is a fiction you can maintain honestly, and this page is the arithmetic that maintains it. On the defaults below, $27,000 landed over six months is a $4,500 average; skim 25% for tax and the draw is $3,375 a month. A $4,000 buffer holds 1.2 months of it — workable, not yet steady: the three-month target is $10,125. Put your own months in.

Runs in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded, sent to a server or stored anywhere except this device. The figures exist only in this page. This is a planning estimate for your own numbers, not financial advice.

Your income, smoothed

Total income over the period ($) everything that actually landed — invoices paid, not invoices sent

Months that total covers six is the usual smoothing window — long enough to contain a bad month, recent enough to be true

Tax set-aside (%) skimmed from the average before the draw is calculated — your own planning percentage, never part of the draw

Monthly fixed costs ($) the costs that arrive every month whether the work does or not — rent, bills, software, insurance, minimum payments

Smoothing buffer you hold today ($) savings set aside for exactly this — not the tax pot, not the emergency fund

Worst month in the period ($) the lowest-grossing month in the window — it tests the buffer against a repeat of your worst recent month

Why one total, and not six monthly fields? Because the average is the only figure the draw is built from — the shape of individual months matters only at the extremes, which is why the worst month gets a field of its own. And if the set-aside percentage is still a guess, the tax set-aside calculator turns the same percentage into a per-payment habit, so the skim happens on the day money lands rather than in a monthly reconstruction.

Your steady monthly draw

—

Enter the income that actually landed over the period.

—What is left of the draw after the month’s fixed costs.

—How long the full draw survives on your buffer alone.

Average monthly income (gross)	—
Tax set-aside per month	—
Safe monthly draw	—
Monthly fixed costs	—
Draw minus fixed costs	—
Buffer you hold today	—
Months of draw the buffer covers	—
Buffer target (3 months of draw)	—
Still to build	—
Worst month, after the set-aside	—
Buffer drain in a worst month	—
Worst months the buffer survives	—

Enter the income that landed and the buffer behind it, and this line reads the shape of the answer back to you.

Worked example

A freelancer adds up what actually landed over the last six months: $27,000 — two strong months, three ordinary ones and a worst month of $1,800. Their planning set-aside is 25%, their fixed costs are $2,900 a month, and they hold $4,000 set aside for smoothing. Enter those numbers above and the calculator returns exactly this:

Total income, last 6 months	$27,000.00
Average monthly income	$4,500.00
Tax set-aside (25%)	$1,125.00
Safe monthly draw	$3,375.00
Monthly fixed costs	$2,900.00
Draw minus fixed costs	+$475.00
Buffer held today	$4,000.00
Months of draw the buffer covers	1.2 months
Buffer target (3 months of draw)	$10,125.00
Still to build	$6,125.00
Worst month ($1,800 gross) after the set-aside	$1,350.00
Buffer drain in a worst month	$2,025.00
Worst months the buffer survives	2.0 months

Read the shape of it. The draw clears the fixed costs with $475 to spare, and it never touches money the tax bill will claim — that part of the system is already honest. What is not finished is the buffer: at 1.2 months of draw it absorbs one bad month comfortably and a repeat of the worst month twice, but the three-month target is still $6,125 away. So the verdict is workable, and the instruction inside it is plain: the $475 surplus months belong to the buffer until the target is reached. The draw rises after the buffer does — not before, and not because a single strong month felt like a trend.

The method

How income smoothing works

Average, not the best month. The draw is set from the trailing average of what actually landed — money received, not work invoiced. An average contains your bad months at their true weight, which is exactly what a self-paid salary needs: a draw set from your best month is a pay rise you award yourself in precisely the months least able to fund it, and it collapses at the first ordinary month. The average is less exciting and it survives contact with the year.
The set-aside comes first. Before the draw exists, your planning percentage is skimmed off the average and put beyond reach. The draw is calculated only on what remains, so it can never contain money a tax bill will later claim. If the percentage itself is still a guess, build the habit properly with the tax set-aside calculator, which applies your own percentage to each payment as it lands — the same skim, done at the moment the money is there to skim.
Two buffers, two jobs. This page sizes a smoothing buffer, and it is not the emergency fund. The one-line difference: the emergency fund is sized from your essential costs and covers months with no income at all; the smoothing buffer is sized from your draw and covers months that still pay, just unevenly. The emergency fund calculator builds the first pot. Keep the two separate, in separate places if you can, and let neither borrow from the other — a thin April is not an emergency, and an emergency is not a smoothing problem.
The worst-month test. An average can hide the month that actually hurts, so the buffer is also tested against a repeat of your worst recent month: what that month pays after the set-aside, subtracted from the draw, is the monthly drain, and the buffer divided by the drain is how many consecutive worst months you survive. A buffer that passes the average test and fails the worst-month test is thinner than it looks — and if your worst month still covers the draw on its own, the test says so, and the buffer is doing its job.
Raise the draw slowly. When income rises, the trailing average rises behind it — let it. Raise the draw only after a full quarter has landed at the new level, when the average has genuinely moved rather than twitched. The solo quarterly business review is the natural moment: four numbers, three decisions, and the draw is one of them. In the meantime the surplus above the old draw is not wasted — it is the buffer reaching its target early.
A draw is not a wage. No employer stands behind it: there is no paid leave folded inside it, no pension contribution added on top, and no notice period if the work stops. It is a transfer discipline — a standing order from the business to you — and it stays real only while the buffer behind it does. That is why the rules above are the system and the draw is merely its output: break the buffer rules and the salary quietly stops being one.

Disclaimer: This is a planning estimate for your own numbers, not financial advice. The three-month buffer target is a widely used rule of thumb, not a law, and the right draw, buffer and set-aside for your situation depend on your costs, your clients and your country. The calculator does honest arithmetic on the figures you give it; significant decisions deserve your own judgement.

One last connection: a smoothing system can only pay out an average that exists. If the draw above comes out below your fixed costs, the problem is upstream — the rate and the billable hours that produce the income in the first place. The hourly rate calculator rebuilds that end of the practice from your income, tax, expenses and capacity, and the income goal calculator tests whether the hours you actually have can produce the average you need.

Questions

Income smoothing calculator questions

Should my draw include tax?+

No — tax never reaches the draw. The set-aside is skimmed from the average first, at the percentage you choose, and the draw is calculated on what is left. That ordering is the whole point: a draw sized on pre-tax income pays you money a tax bill will later claim, and the month the bill lands, the system breaks. Skim first, draw second, and the bill is already funded by money that was never yours to spend.

What if my income is rising fast?+

Use the trailing average anyway. A rising practice makes the recent months look like the new normal, and they may be — but the draw's job is to survive the months that are not. The lag is not a flaw in the method; it is the safety in it. When a full quarter has landed at the new level, the average has genuinely moved and the draw can rise with it. Until then, the surplus above the draw is not lost — it is building the buffer that makes the higher draw safe later.

How is this different from an emergency fund?+

Different pot, different job. The emergency fund is sized from your essential costs and exists for the months with no income at all — a lost client, a dry quarter, an illness. The smoothing buffer is sized from your draw and exists for the ordinary months that still pay, just unevenly — the big March and the thin April. One protects you when income stops; the other evens it out while it continues. Keep them separate, and let neither borrow from the other.