[Feen]

Matt, This is what I do...roughly I work mainly as a wc but also farm/garden jobs. Whatever, it doesn't matter. All my earnings go into an account. That account has 2 standing orders going out of it. One pays my wife a small amount weekly for secretarial services. The other pays our joint account, from which all household bills are paid. The rest is transferred to a savings account as and when there are excess funds. That savings account then pays for the extra we need, be that work equipment or a holiday. As we have 3 small kids and i see a holiday away from home as a waste (I really love where I live), holidays don't amount to much cash. I have employed people in a past life (not wc) and really don't want to go there again. I am happy earning enough from what I do. Off to bed soon, lambing at 6am and wc by 10am hopefully.

[sair]

hi mat

i have allways just worked from one  bank account, every thing goes into it from there all is directed to where it needs to go, i have a spread sheet on xcell linked to income .
 at top has income then everthing that goes out. ie house keep, mortgage, van utilities, VAT , business expense in red. (non business black for accounts purpose only) any thing and every thing we spend

i have never done % of income thats why i  use spread sheet it, so its clearer to see,

i never assign accounts for items we want or for vat or for mtge, it just all goes one pot so its clearer what we need to earn, then i just do the jobs, its banked, then we get on with living. 

from there we work out what we need over the year for holidays, savings for van/ car. unforeseen things. pop that amount in spread sheet.
then we ask ourselves, how much do we need to earn to comfortably assign all outgoings leaving a little spare for when we are older

like you all i want is needs meet! whether this involves me doing all the work or whether i employ to help me. having more time for family, currently i have changed my life style and i have 2-3 days a week doing things i want to do with my life. 

[Londoner]

Heres a good question to ask yourself. Does your business have enough put away so if you lost everything ( van etc ) and there was no insurance pay out for some reason, you could buy it all again? Luke

Its more likely to be illness than anything else and you definitely should have some money put away for such events.