When to quit your job for UGC

Why a date is the wrong kind of plan

A date is chosen before you know what you'll earn. Brand-deal income is lumpy: one big month is easy to mistake for the new normal, and a quiet month after it feels like failure when it's just the shape of the work. And a date stays put while everything it depended on changes.

Set a trigger instead

A trigger is a condition you can check: “when UGC income covers X, for Y months running”.

• X is your essential costs, not your salary. Rent, bills, food, transport and minimum debt payments. Matching your old salary can come later; covering what you can't go without is what makes leaving safe.
• Y is at least three months. Long enough that one big deal can't trip it on its own.
• Count money paid, not invoiced. Brands pay late. A trigger that counts invoices can trip on money you haven't got.
• Count it after tax. Put the tax aside first (below), then see whether what's left clears the line.

Pricing is part of this: a trigger is much easier to reach if you're not giving usage away. See whether to give a brand usage rights forever.

Have a buffer as well as a trigger

The trigger tells you the income is real; savings carry you through the months it dips. A common benchmark for an emergency fund is three to six months of essential outgoings. If you're leaving a salary for income that varies month to month, the top of that range is the safer place to start.

The UK admin to sort first

• Register for Self Assessment once your self-employed income is over £1,000 in a tax year (the trading allowance). HMRC needs to hear by 5 October after the end of that tax year, and telling it later can mean a penalty.
• Put tax aside as you're paid. Nobody takes it off for you any more: Income Tax and National Insurance on your profit are paid through Self Assessment.
• Read your contract's notice period and any clause about outside work, so that when the trigger trips you can leave properly.

When this doesn't hold

• If you have dependants, debts or a mortgage to keep up, raise both the trigger and the buffer.
• If one contract guarantees your income for a year, that's a different decision: the risk is depending on one client, not lumpy income.
• If your job stops you doing the work at all, going part-time first may be the step, rather than waiting for a trigger you can't reach.

Where Clearspace fits

Tell Clearspace your trigger and what comes in as it comes in. Its business mentor checks the decision against those numbers when you bring it up, says plainly if you're not there yet, and checks back on what you said you'd do.