When should you quit your job to go self-employed? The numbers to check first

“Save a cushion and wait until you have clients” is the advice that gets repeated everywhere, and it doesn’t help you decide anything: how big a cushion? How many clients? Billing how much? Leaving a fixed salary for your own business is a decision you can put off forever if you never turn it into concrete numbers. Here are the three that actually matter, and a way to test the water without having to choose between your salary and the leap.

The first number: your cushion, and why it has to be bigger than an employee’s

If you lose your income, an employee who gets laid off usually has unemployment benefit as a safety net. A self-employed person who closes their business doesn’t have that safety net automatically: there is a benefit for ceasing activity, but it requires having contributed for that specific coverage for at least twelve of the last twenty-four months, a legally valid reason for closing (losses or force majeure count; closing just because you feel like it doesn’t), and being up to date with payments. We cover this in detail in what you’ll still pay after deregistering: closing down isn’t the same as becoming unemployed, and in your first year you almost never have that coverage built up yet.

That changes the cushion math. An employee’s emergency fund is calculated from your real fixed expenses for a full year, irregular ones included. To make the leap to self-employment, you add a bigger margin to that same calculation, for three very specific reasons: you don’t have the unemployment safety net set up from day one, your income as a self-employed person takes time to stabilise, and your first invoices are almost never collected the same month you issue them.

There’s no universal figure, but the rule for setting yours is always the same: add up your real fixed expenses for the year (the ones from recurring household expenses, irregular ones included) and multiply them by the number of months it would take you to recover if the business went badly: with a family depending on you, or expenses you can’t postpone, that margin needs to be more generous than if you live alone and can cut back quickly.

The second number: what has to come in every month, not what your best month billed

This is where most people fool themselves: they look at their best month of the year and treat it as the average. The number that matters is how much you need to bill, consistently, so that what’s left after the self-employed contribution and taxes is enough to live on, not before.

We already did that whole calculation, with examples and tables, in how much a self-employed worker needs to bill to take home €2,000 a month: the contribution depends on your net income bracket, so the maths is circular, and there are bracket jumps where billing a bit more barely changes what you keep. The real, income-based contribution, quarter by quarter, is in self-employed contribution by real income.

What this question adds, which the previous ones don’t answer because they’re about how much to bill, is when that number stops being a possibility and becomes a fact: the signal isn’t one lucky month, it’s that calculation holding consistently, for several months in a row, with clients who come back or a flow of work that doesn’t depend on a single one-off deal.

Testing the water without burning your bridges: pluriactividad

What almost nobody tells you is that you don’t have to choose between keeping your salary and finding out whether your business works. Being employed and registered as self-employed at the same time is perfectly compatible: it’s called pluriactividad, and you don’t need any special permission from Social Security to do it (though it’s worth checking your employment contract for an exclusivity or non-compete clause that might affect what you’re planning to do).

Two things worth being clear about before using this route:

• If your activity is already habitual, you have to register, whether or not you also have another job. The obligation to register doesn’t depend on whether you have another job; it depends on whether what you’re doing counts as a habitual economic activity. If what you’re actually asking is whether a one-off job already forces you to register, that question is answered separately in you got paid for one or two one-off jobs, do you have to register?.
• Pluriactividad doesn’t give you a discount on your contribution. What you do get, if your contributions for common contingencies (your self-employed ones plus those on your payslip, including your employer’s share) exceed, over the year, the limit set each year by the General State Budget Act, is the right to an automatic refund of 50% of that excess.¹ It’s a refund on what you’ve already paid, not an upfront discount: it doesn’t change what you bill or which bracket you contribute at, but it does lower the real cost of keeping both contributions running at once while you test things out.

While you’re in pluriactividad, you can let your business grow with the cushion of your salary still in place, and use exactly the second number in this article (what’s left over each month, consistently, not your best month) to decide when the leap stops being a leap into the unknown.

The signal that it’s time: several months, not one

Put the three numbers together, and the signal to quit your job isn’t a single milestone, it’s that all three hold true at the same time, consistently:

• Your cushion is calculated from your real fixed expenses, with a bigger margin than an employee’s, and it’s already saved, not planned.
• What’s left from your business, after the contribution and taxes, covers your fixed expenses for several months running, not one exceptional one.
• The clients or work behind that figure don’t depend on a single deal: if one falls through, the rest still covers the month.

If all three fail at once, it’s not that you can’t be self-employed: it’s that it isn’t time to leave the salary yet. Staying in pluriactividad for a few more months isn’t failing at the attempt; it’s the way to find out without betting your whole cushion on it.

How Cuéntamo helps

While you’re in pluriactividad, your personal transactions and your business ones live in the same accounts, and Cuéntamo tells them apart by scope (personal or self-employed) without you having to keep two separate spreadsheets. That lets you see, month by month, whether the second number in this article (what’s left from the business) already covers your fixed expenses consistently, in the same cash flow forecast where you already see the rest of your money, instead of having to calculate it separately every month to know whether it’s time to make the leap.

You can try Cuéntamo for free at cuentamo.com.

Frequently asked questions

How big a cushion do I need before quitting my job to go self-employed?

There’s no single figure: it depends on your real fixed expenses for a full year (irregular ones included) and how many months it would take you to recover if the business went badly. The rule is the same as any employee’s emergency fund, but with a bigger margin, because as a self-employed person you don’t have unemployment benefit as an automatic safety net if you have to close.

Can I test my business without quitting my job?

Yes, it’s called pluriactividad: you can be registered as self-employed and keep working as an employee at the same time, with no special permission needed from Social Security (it’s worth checking your contract for exclusivity clauses). If your self-employed activity is already habitual, you have to register regardless of whether you also work for another company.

Does pluriactividad lower my self-employed contribution?

Not directly. What you get is the right to an automatic refund of 50% of the excess of your contributions for common contingencies over the limit set each year by the General State Budget Act, if you go over it. It’s a refund on what you’ve paid, not an upfront discount on the contribution itself.¹

How do I know how much I need to bill for it to be worth leaving my salary?

Calculate how much you need left over each month after the contribution and taxes, not before. We already did that calculation with examples in how much a self-employed worker needs to bill to take home €2,000 a month.

What’s the signal that it’s time to make the leap?

That your cushion is already saved, that what’s left from your business covers your fixed expenses for several months running (not one exceptional one), and that figure doesn’t depend on a single client. When all three hold true at once for several months, the leap stops being a bet.

Cuéntamo is an accounting app for households and the self-employed that tells you how much money you’ll have in the months ahead. You can try it for free at cuentamo.com.

The mechanism in this article (cushion, what’s actually left over, and pluriactividad as a way to test things) doesn’t depend on the tax calendar. The exact pluriactividad contribution-excess threshold is set each year by the General State Budget Act; check the source if you need the precise figure.

This article is checked against official sources and reviewed periodically. If you spot something out of date, write to us at [email protected].