Lumpy income survival: paying yourself a salary

Lumpy is the default

Indie dev revenue rarely arrives evenly. A launch hits in March. A contract pays in July. Subscription MRR slowly climbs. Months go by with nothing.

The bills don't care. Rent is monthly. Insurance is monthly. Groceries are weekly. The mismatch is the source of most indie-dev financial stress — not low total income, but bad cash-flow timing.

The fix is structural. It takes one afternoon.

Two accounts, one transfer

You need:

1. A business account. All revenue lands here. All business expenses leave from here. Treat it as the company.
2. A personal account. Your salary lands here. Personal bills leave from here.

Then a standing transfer that moves a fixed monthly "salary" from the business account to the personal account on the 1st.

That's the entire system.

Sizing the salary

Calculate it once a year. Pull last 12 months of personal expenses. Add 15% for unexpected costs and quarterly tax. Divide by 12. That's your monthly salary number.

Example: $54,000 of personal spend last year + $8,000 buffer = $62,000. Salary = $5,166/mo.

When revenue comes in, it goes to the business account. When the salary date arrives, $5,166 transfers. If the business account has $40k that month, the transfer happens. If it has $200k that month, the transfer is still $5,166. The excess stays put.

What this fixes

Spending pressure. Personal spending is no longer triggered by revenue spikes. You see "the company had a big month" and your personal account balance doesn't change. Lifestyle stays anchored to the salary.

Tax buffer. Quarterly estimated taxes come from the business account. If you mix accounts, the tax money looks like spendable money. It isn't. Separation makes the line clear.

Investment trigger. When the business account exceeds 6 months of operating costs and 6 months of salary runway, the excess goes to investments. That rule is mechanical. You don't decide each month whether to invest — the buffer level decides.

Bad-month survival. A month with zero revenue doesn't change your life. The salary still hits. The business account drains a bit, then refills when the next contract pays.

The rule for raising your salary

Do it once a year. Not when a big month happens.

Big months are noise. The signal is your trailing-12-month revenue trend. If that trend is durably higher, raise the salary at the annual review. Not before.

This is the single discipline that separates indie devs whose lifestyle inflates with every windfall from indie devs whose net worth actually compounds.

The system in one sentence

The business pays you a salary. The salary pays your life. Everything else is optimization.