No Idea What to Earn Next Year? The Mulled Wine Queue

2026-10-16

The queue for mulled wine snakes past the pretzel stand and halfway to the carousel. It is a Saturday afternoon in late November. Your breath shows in the cold air, your gloves are slightly too thin, and your friend Jonas is stamping his feet beside you.

He is easy company. He works in logistics, has a salary, and asks the question people with salaries ask without thinking.

"So what are you aiming for next year? Money-wise?"

You are an illustrator. Mostly book covers, some editorial work, the odd packaging job. You say, "Oh, you know. Hopefully a bit more than this year."

He nods. The queue moves one step. And something small and cold settles in your stomach that has nothing to do with the weather.

Because you don't know. You genuinely have no idea.

The number you have never said out loud

Not a vague hope. A number. What do you actually need to earn next year to pay your rent, cover your insurance, put something aside, and still take the week in spring you keep promising yourself?

You have a feeling about it. A feeling is what you've been running your business on for years. "Enough" has meant this month didn't hurt. "Good" has meant two clients paid early.

And January is coming. You can feel it the way you feel a dentist appointment. The new year has a way of asking questions you spent December avoiding. What did last year really bring in? Which clients were worth it? What now?

So you do what many freelancers do. You tell yourself you'll sort it out in the first week of January, when things are quiet. Then January arrives, and it is not quiet in the way you hoped. It is quiet in the way that makes you nervous, with an empty calendar and a full inbox of other people's plans.

What the guessing quietly costs

The queue shuffles forward again. Jonas is telling a story about a delayed shipment, and you are only half listening.

You are thinking about last March, when you said yes to a project at a rate you knew was low. You said yes because you didn't know whether you could afford to say no. If you'd had a number in your head, a real one, you might have paused. You might have asked for more.

You are thinking about the summer week off that wasn't one. You sat by the lake with your phone face down on the towel, doing quiet arithmetic. Was this week affordable? You never found out. You just felt vaguely guilty until Thursday.

Not knowing doesn't look dramatic. It looks like small, polite decisions made from a slightly anxious place. A discount offered before anyone asked. A "sure, I can squeeze that in" that costs you a weekend. A year that ends with you tired, and unable to say whether it was a good one.

The cup in your hands

You reach the front. The woman behind the counter ladles two cups, and the steam fogs your glasses. Jonas pays before you can object, and you walk over to a standing table with strings of lights above it.

"You okay?" he asks. "You went quiet."

You laugh. "I realised I can't answer your question. I've worked for myself for six years and I couldn't tell you what next year should look like."

He doesn't try to fix it. He just says, "Isn't it just... a plan? Like, how much you need, how much you can work, how many weeks you're off, and what's already coming in?"

He says it as though it were obvious. And standing there with a hot cup warming your hands, it does sound obvious. A plan. Not a prediction, not a promise to anyone. Just a calm page that says: here is what I need, here is how much room I have, here is where I'm heading.

Nobody ever told you that you were allowed to do that, or that it could be a small thing you do once, rather than a dread you carry around.

A different first week of January

Imagine it differently.

It's the first Monday of the new year. The radiator ticks. You open one file, and it already holds the shape of your year. A target you chose on purpose. The weeks you're off, marked in before the work could crowd them out. A short list of projects that might happen, separate from the ones that will.

You don't feel dazzled. You feel oriented. When an enquiry arrives in February with a slightly insulting budget, you know your number, and you can answer in a steady voice. When a slow month shows up, you can see it against the whole year instead of reading it as a verdict on your worth.

And at the end of March, you look at how the first quarter went. You adjust, kindly, and close the laptop on time.

Nothing about the work has changed. But you are no longer guessing.

Before the year turns

You finish the mulled wine. Jonas gets distracted by the roasted almonds. You take out your phone and, instead of scrolling, type a short note to yourself: Make a real plan for 2027. Before January.

It feels like a small decision. It's also the first time in weeks that the knot in your stomach has loosened a little.

If you recognise yourself in that queue, you don't have to build the plan from scratch. The 2027 Freelance Business Planner is an Excel workbook for exactly this: revenue targets against actuals, a simple pipeline, time off you can plan with a clear head, quarterly check-ins, and one dashboard to see it all. It comes with a 30-day money-back promise, so if it doesn't help, you get a full refund. It supports your own planning and does not replace a tax professional.

You can take a look at the planner here, whenever it suits you. December is a perfectly good time to start, and so is a quiet Saturday with something warm in your hands.

An illustrative story, written with AI assistance.