The Self-Employed Money Manual

About this book

<b>Money management for the self-employed, how to pay yourself a salary from irregular income, quarterly estimated taxes, and self-employed retirement accounts — from a CPA of fourteen years who serves freelancers, consultants, and solo business owners.</b> <p>A client named Renata sat across from Janelle Okonkwo crying about money the same year she billed her best year ever: $186,000 in revenue, a magazine feature, a waiting list. She had $1,400 in checking and owed the IRS $31,000. Okonkwo has watched that exact scene for fourteen years, because it is the median experience of someone in their second or third year of self-employment: the income arrives, the discipline doesn't, and by spring the IRS sends a letter. This is the practical, plainspoken money management for self-employed people that no one hands you when you go independent.</p> <p>The core insight: self-employment removes every financial guardrail of a W-2 job on the same day, with no warning, and almost nobody teaches you to rebuild them. So this book rebuilds each one. You will learn how to pay yourself a real salary from irregular income, the tax savings habit that taxes every deposit in real time so quarterly estimated taxes never trigger panic, the five bank accounts every self-employed person needs, and how to choose between a SEP-IRA and a Solo 401(k). Okonkwo is honest about what this is not: not a tax manual, not an investment book. It is the system of habits and account structures that makes a calm financial life for self-employed people possible at all.</p> <h4>Inside this self-employed money management book:</h4> <ul> <li><b>Pay yourself a real salary from irregular income</b> — The four-step calculation (net income minus taxes, retirement, and operating reserve) that sets a fixed paycheck your lumpy business can pay even in a bad month, with a worked example down to $2,113.75 semi-monthly</li> <li><b>The tax savings habit that prevents year-end disaster</b> — Move a fixed percentage (28% default) of every deposit to a tax account the day it clears, so quarterly estimated taxes are funded before you ever feel the money is yours</li> <li><b>The five bank accounts every self-employed person needs</b> — The exact account structure and two automatic monthly transfers that do the work a payroll department used to do for free</li> <li><b>Separate business and personal money</b> — Why this is the single most important move you will ever make, and how to draw a clean line starting next month without untangling three years of commingled history</li> <li><b>Self-employed retirement accounts decoded</b> — SEP-IRA, Solo 401(k), and Roth compared in plain language, plus how to fund them out of an income that never arrives the same twice</li> <li><b>The harder moves most guides skip</b> — Buying a home when lenders distrust the self-employed, health insurance with no employer, surviving an audit, multi-state tax traps, and planning for the year you take off or sell the business</li> <li><b>An action at the end of every chapter</b> — Each labeled "Try this:" takes under an hour, because reading without action is what got most of Okonkwo's clients into trouble in the first place</li> </ul> <p>This is not a get-rich book and not a 30-day cure. It is the financial system a CPA wishes she could hand every new client before the bad habits compound, before the missed quarterly payment, before the year of regret. Renata is fine now: she paid the IRS in installments, made her quarterlies on time, contributed $48,000 to a Solo 401(k), and bought a house. Her business did not change. Her system did. That is what this book builds for the self-employed.</p> <p><b>For readers of <b>Mike Michalowicz</b>'s Profit First and <b>Ramit Sethi</b>'s I Will Teach You to Be Rich.</b></p>