Going full time freelance works best when three things are in place before you resign. The first is a cash runway that covers several months of personal and business costs. The second is an honest picture of what your freelance work really earns each month. The third is a habit of setting money aside for tax and quiet periods. The admin setup is easiest while a salary still lands.
You would be joining a big crowd. Around 1.1 million Australians worked as independent contractors, or 7.6% of employed people (ABS, 2025). Most of them didn't go from zero to full time overnight. The ones who make it last tend to treat the jump as a planned key change, not a stage dive. We see this from both sides. Amplify 11 is led by a Chartered Accountant who is also a working lead guitarist, so the lumpy income, the late-paying venues and the gear upgrades that land in the same month as a quiet patch are familiar territory.
One thing catches most new freelancers off guard: when the money arrives matters more than how much you earn across the year.
Start with the data, because it reframes what "full time" means for most creatives. Most professional artists earn from a mix of creative work, arts-related work and non-arts work. Relatively few can meet their minimum income needs from creative work alone, and fewer still work full time on their creative practice. Freelancing is the default mode: most artists work freelance or self-employed in their practice.
Full time freelance, for most creatives, means full time self-employment across a portfolio. A musician might combine gigs, session work, teaching and royalties. A designer might pair two retainer clients with one-off branding jobs. A photographer might shoot weddings on weekends and product work midweek. The passion projects are the melody, but the steady, slightly boring work is the bass line that holds the song together. Plan around the bass line.
This is also the strongest argument for building the business on the side first. Every month of side income you earn while employed is evidence about what clients will pay, how often they come back and how long they take to pay.
Moneysmart, ASIC's consumer money site, describes a simple method that suits creatives well. You add up your monthly expenses to set a fixed monthly pay figure for yourself. Then you take the year's earnings, divide by 12 to get a monthly average and see whether you're ahead. With irregular income, surplus from good months covers lean months and surprise costs.
The trick is to be honest about both sides. Your personal costs include rent or mortgage repayments, groceries, transport, phone, debts and the small stuff that adds up. Your business costs are separate: software subscriptions, gear repairs and replacement, strings and consumables, travel to gigs and shoots, insurance, website hosting and professional fees.
Here is a simplified illustration using round hypothetical numbers. Real outcomes depend entirely on individual circumstances.
Say personal costs come to $4,000 a month and business costs to $600 a month. That sets a monthly figure of $4,600. Now say the last 12 months of freelance work brought in $66,000. Divided by 12, that's a monthly average of $5,500, which is $900 a month above the target, or $10,800 across the year. That surplus is before any money is set aside for tax, which a registered tax agent can help size for your situation.
Two adjustments make the picture more realistic. Side income earned on evenings and weekends doesn't scale neatly to full time, because a chunk of every working week goes on pitching, quoting, invoicing, chasing payments and bookkeeping rather than billable work. And some costs only appear once you leave employment: no paid leave, no employer super contributions and possibly different insurance arrangements. More on those below.
Runway is the number of months your savings can pay your monthly figure if freelance income slows or stalls. Divide the cash you have set aside by your monthly figure and you have your runway in months.
Some creatives leaving a salary aim for around six months of runway, though the right amount depends on individual circumstances. A common reason is invoice payment times rather than pessimism. Late payment is a long-standing pattern: 53% of trade-credit payments to small businesses were paid late, by 23 days on average (Xero data cited by PM&C, 2020). Work you deliver in your first month may not reach your bank account until your third.
The table below runs the same hypothetical $4,600 monthly figure against a six-month runway of $27,600 and a lumpy, realistic pattern of payments arriving. Again, this is a simplified illustration with round numbers, it ignores tax set-asides, and real results depend on individual circumstances.
| Month | Payments received | Monthly pay figure | Runway balance at month end |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start | $27,600 | ||
| 1 | $0 | $4,600 | $23,000 |
| 2 | $1,500 | $4,600 | $19,900 |
| 3 | $6,000 | $4,600 | $21,300 |
| 4 | $3,000 | $4,600 | $19,700 |
| 5 | $8,000 | $4,600 | $23,100 |
| 6 | $4,500 | $4,600 | $23,000 |
Across the six months, $23,000 arrived, an average of about $3,833 a month. That's below the monthly figure, so the runway shrank by $4,600, a full month's worth. Nothing went wrong here. Clients paid, work kept coming, and the business was building. The runway simply absorbed the gap between doing the work and getting paid for it. Without it, month two would have been a crisis.
A runway isn't a savings goal, it's the time you buy so slow payers can catch up with good work.
A cash-flow forecast turns this from a one-off exercise into a habit. The business.gov.au cash-flow guide describes estimating your sales, when payments will actually arrive, and your fixed and variable costs, then updating the forecast regularly. The words "actually arrive" carry the weight. Forecast by payment date, not invoice date.
So how do you know you're ready to resign? A practical test is when three signs line up. Your side income has covered a meaningful share of your monthly pay figure for several months in a row. At least some of that work is repeat or retainer work rather than one-off jobs. And your runway target is fully funded. If one of the three is missing, some freelancers choose to keep building on the side until it's in place.
Employees have tax, leave and super handled by someone else. Freelancers carry all three, and the cleanest way to manage them is to split money the moment it arrives.
Tax comes first. Moneysmart's guidance is blunt: "Put money aside as you earn it, rather than waiting to receive a big tax bill." The practical version is a separate savings account used only for tax, with a set percentage of every payment moved across as soon as it lands. The right percentage depends on your income, deductions and circumstances, so a registered tax agent is the person to set it. Growing businesses may also be placed on PAYG instalments, which are regular prepayments towards the coming year's tax, and whether GST registration applies depends on your turnover. A tax agent can explain how both rules apply to you, and it's far less stressful to have that conversation before the first big year than after it.
Leave is the cost nobody prices in. As Moneysmart puts it, "Being self-employed means you won't have the benefit of paid holidays or sick leave." A week off, a bout of flu or a tour that pays in exposure all come out of your own pocket. Building a buffer from good months into your monthly figure is how many freelancers fund their own time off.
Super changes too. No employer contributions arrive once you're self-employed, so any retirement savings through super are up to you. Whether and how much to contribute is a personal financial decision, and a licensed financial adviser is the right person for that. The tax treatment of personal contributions depends on meeting certain conditions, which a registered tax agent can explain.
Insurance deserves a look before you resign, not after. Moneysmart flags that moving from employee to self-employed may affect insurance held through your super fund. Understanding what changes, by checking with your fund or a licensed adviser, avoids discovering a gap at the worst possible moment.
The admin is easiest while a salary is still covering your rent. Here are steps many freelancers commonly complete before their last day at the day job. A registered tax agent can confirm how these steps apply to you:
Doing this while employed also gives you a trial run. A few months of side income flowing through a business account, with tax set aside and books kept in Xero, shows whether the system works before your rent depends on it.
Even a well-planned leap has wobbly months. A client folds, a festival is cancelled, a big invoice drifts past 90 days. Plans like the one above can soften those months, but no plan removes them, and the sooner you act on a cash squeeze, the more options you tend to have.
Free help exists and is worth knowing about before you need it. The Small Business Debt Helpline (1800 413 828) offers free financial counselling, and Beyond Blue's NewAccess for Small Business Owners offers free coaching for the stress that comes with running your own show. If a letter arrives from the ATO, a registered tax agent can explain what it means and what your options are.
Stepping back to part-time employment for a stretch is not a failure, either. Mixed income is how most working creatives operate, and a day job that funds a growing practice is a perfectly sound arrangement. Full time freelance is a destination you can approach in stages.
This article is general information only, reflects the rules at the time of writing and does not take your personal circumstances into account. If you're tuning up for the leap and want your numbers to hold the beat, the Amplify 11 team would love to jam through it with you: call (02) 4715 1000 or email [email protected]. Ready to crank your finances up to 11?
Yes, many creatives combine part-time employment with freelance work. Your employer withholds tax from your wages as usual, while your freelance income is reported separately in your tax return. Combining the two can affect how much tax money is worth setting aside from freelance payments, so a registered tax agent can help work out an appropriate amount based on your total income.
Start with polite, written reminders and a phone call, keeping records of every contact. Clear payment terms on your original quote and invoice make this easier. If the debt remains unpaid, options can include small claims processes run by state and territory tribunals or courts, which differ across Australia. For advice on recovering a specific debt or enforcing a contract, speak with a lawyer.
It isn't compulsory, and some freelancers manage their own records and returns at first. Many find early advice useful because decisions made at the start, such as structure, record keeping and how much to set aside for tax, are easier to get right than to fix later. A registered tax agent is the only paid adviser allowed to prepare and lodge tax returns for a fee.
A useful starting point is working backwards from your monthly pay figure and business costs, then dividing by the number of billable hours you can realistically sell after admin, pitching and time off. Compare that with what similar creatives charge in your field and location. Rates usually need reviewing as your skills, demand and costs change, so treat your first price list as a draft.
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