How to plan paid time off as a freelancer

When you work for yourself, nobody pays you to be away. There is no HR policy, no accrued leave and no paid public holidays. In the US that is true for plenty of employees as well: the Department of Labor notes that federal law does not require pay for time not worked, such as vacations, and leaves it to the agreement between employer and employee. In a studio of one, you are both sides of that agreement. So time off is a decision you make once a year, in numbers, and then build into your prices, your savings and your calendar. Here is how to make it before the next busy season makes it for you.

Count the days before you set a rate

Start with the year, not the day rate. A year has 52 weeks of five weekdays, so 260 working days at most. Take out the days you won’t work, then the days you’ll spend working on the studio rather than for clients. What is left is the number your income has to come from.

Line	Days	Days left
Every weekday in the year	260	260
Public holidays	−11	249
Vacation (four weeks)	−20	229
Sick and personal days	−5	224
Admin, quoting and marketing (one day in five)	−45	179

The 11 public holidays are the US federal holidays; swap in your own list if you work through some of them or keep others. Twenty days of vacation and five sick days are an example, not a benchmark: pick the numbers you would want from a good job.

The last line is the one new freelancers leave out. Quoting, invoicing, email, bookkeeping and finding the next client all take time that no client pays for directly. If you don’t know your share, run a timer such as Toggl Track for a month, with one project for client work and one for everything else; our Tools page lists it beside other time trackers that suit a single seat. Then replace the one-in-five guess with what you measured.

Price the time off into your day rate

Now divide. Say you want the studio to pay you $90,000 a year before tax, not counting what the studio itself costs to run. Spread over all 260 weekdays, that is about $346 a day, and you would have to bill every one of them. Spread over the 179 days you will actually bill, it is about $503 a day.

That gap is your time off, your sick days and your admin, paid for. It is not a premium you add on top, and it is nothing to apologize for. An employer prices the same costs into every salary; you just do it in the open.

The studio’s running costs come on top. How to calculate your freelance day rate adds $12,000 a year of software, hardware and other overheads to this same example and, over the same 179 days, arrives at $570 a day; the day-rate calculator in The Studio Kit runs the sum with your own numbers. If the result feels high for your market, change the inputs you control: fewer admin days through better templates, a slightly shorter vacation, or fewer, larger projects. Don’t solve it by quietly deleting the vacation row. Rates, quotes and the rest of the arithmetic have their own section: Pricing & Money.

Save a share of every payment

A day rate that covers time off only works if the money is still there when you stop. Freelance income arrives in lumps, a deposit here and a net 30 invoice there, so set the time-off share aside as it comes in, not the month before you leave.

• Size the share. Divide your days off by the weekdays in the year: in the example, 36 days off out of 260 is about 14%. Once the tax share of a payment has gone to its own account, move about 14% of what is left.
• Keep it separate. A savings account with its own name, apart from your operating account and the money you hold for estimated tax, is harder to raid in a slow month.
• Move it on payment day. Transfer the share the day a client pays, before anything else touches the money.
• Pay yourself the same amount every month. If the studio pays you a steady draw, the weeks off look like any other month in your personal account.

Book your weeks off a year ahead

Time off you plan in October happens. Time off you plan for “when this project wraps” gets eaten by the next inquiry. Put the year’s breaks in the calendar before client work fills it.

Pick the quiet months

Most studios have a rhythm: months when inquiries pile up and months when they thin out. Look back at last year’s invoices and booked days, and put your longest break in the slowest stretch. In your first year, block the weeks around the holidays, when your clients are likely to be away as well. Then add one or two long weekends spaced through the year, so you are never more than a few months from a break. A paper planner with monthly pages, such as the 12-month planners at Moleskine, puts the breaks where you will see them every week.

Tell clients early

Once the dates are set, they go into every proposal and schedule you send. Tell retainer clients at least a month ahead, and remind everyone you are working with two weeks before you leave. You don’t owe anyone a reason, only the dates, what will be finished before you go and when you are back.

Tip: when you quote a timeline, count working days only and name the weeks you are away in the schedule itself. A deadline that already skips your vacation never has to be renegotiated.

Hand over before you leave

The week before a break is where time off usually goes wrong: a final round of revisions lands on Friday afternoon. Plan the last week as carefully as the trip.

1. Keep the last two working days before you leave free of deadlines. They are for loose ends, not deliverables.
2. Send each active client a short note: what is done, what is waiting on their feedback and the date you will pick it up.
3. Agree what counts as urgent, if anything, and how they reach you for that alone.
4. Set an out-of-office reply with your return date and, if you have one, a collaborator who can cover emergencies.
5. Sign out of client chat and project apps on your phone until you are back.

If a client does need work while you are away and you agree to do it, treat it like any change request: quote it, schedule it and bill it, at your normal rate or a rush rate you set in advance. How to handle scope creep covers pricing a change and getting it signed before you start.

Plan for the sick days you can’t book

Vacation goes in the calendar; flu doesn’t. The five sick days in the table only help if your schedules have room to absorb them. Build a day or two of slack into every project timeline, so one bad week moves a deadline without breaking it. Keep a short list of freelancers you trust who could step in on a deliverable. And decide in advance how your contract handles delays you can’t control; a lawyer can help you word that clause for where you work.

Watch for the slower kind of sick too. The World Health Organization describes burnout as the result of chronic workplace stress that has not been managed, marked by exhaustion, distance from your work and a drop in how well you do it. When there is no one to cover for you, nothing forces a break except the one you planned. The days off in your table are not a reward for a good year. They are part of how you keep doing the work.

More on working for yourself, from going freelance to staying that way, is in Freelancing.