Proper Planning For Taking Time Off Work

Self-employment has many perks, but paid sick days and holidays are not part of the package, unless you plan for it! Ideally we’d all have six months of living expenses in a savings account to cover for emergencies big and small. But that’s not always the case, and you may not want to touch your emergency fund for things you can plan for ahead of time.

I recently took 2.5 weeks off to recover from tonsil surgery, and it was stress-free because I had prepared my bank account and my business to take the time to focus on healing. This is how I did it.

 

Know Your Expenses

Don’t do this in your head. If you don’t already have a list of your bills, pull up your bank account online. List the due dates and amounts of all of your bills that will come due while you are off work. Make sure you include everything. Don’t forget your Netflix or Hulu subscriptions, and check on annual bills like Amazon Prime or tenant insurance to make sure you don’t leave anything out.

Add in estimates for your variable expenses (things like groceries, where the amounts change month-to-month). I use You Need A Budget to track my spending, so I can easily estimate this amount using averages from previous months. (Need help with your money? Get a 90 day trial of YNAB here) If you’re planning for a holiday, make sure you are including any transportation, activity, and accomodation expenses that you haven’t yet saved for. Add all of this together to get the amount you need to save for your time off. If it seems like a lot, don’t panic–there are ways to offset this.

 

Estimate Income

Depending on how far ahead you’re planning for, you may already know the amount of any payments that will be coming in while you’re off. Subtract these known amounts from your total expenses. If the pay period for any of your sites will result in receiving payments while you’re off, estimate the amounts to subtract from your total to be saved. Be conservative, and remember to account for the last date that you will be working. Also be reasonable about how much you will be able to earn with extra “active” work like camming or phone sex in the time you have before you take off. Working 16 hours per day, 7 days per week is not reasonable! Now that you have partially offset your total with work you will do before your time off, you can prepare some more passive forms of income.

 

Prepare Your Content

If you have enough time before your break, create content. Videos, audio recordings, photo sets, written erotica, whatever you’ve had success in selling, make more of it. Plan regular releases during your time off, and upload and schedule all of the release dates within your chosen sites. Use a service like Tweetdeck or Buffer to schedule social media promotion for each item to make sure you get maximum exposure for your content with zero effort required during your time off. If your social media accounts are typically pretty busy, consider scheduling some sexy photos to post to keep your feeds looking active.

 

Add A Cushion

This is less necessary if you’re planning a holiday, but if you are taking time off for medical reasons, make sure to give yourself some wiggle room. My surgeon had told me I’d probably be back to work in two weeks, but I planned for three weeks in case I had any complications. I’m glad I did; I ended up needing a few extra days before my throat could handle gagging blowjobs on my favorite dildo!

 

Relax and Unplug!

Make sure you take the time off. Turn off notifications on your phone and take care of YOU. Focus on healing if you’re taking medical leave, or focus on having fun if it’s a holiday! Without defined work hours and coworkers insulating you from your job tasks, it can be hard to let it all go, but you need to. You’ve planned well, saved your money, and are ready for this. Take the time off so you’re better than ever when you get back to work!

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