How I Budgeted To Quit My Job

In this #devlog, I discuss the budgeting tactics that led up to my self-employment journey creating video games as a solo #indieDev.

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[Aarimous]

When I graduated college my checking account hit $5 because I didn't have a handle on my money. Since then I've done a budget like this every month. This has helped me understand if I save/lost money that month. Then I can allocate that savings or adjust my spending habits in the coming months. Plus going through transaction line by line gives me a very good feel for where I am spending my money. Great video!

[CeilingSteps]

as always I love to see these videos, very down to earth version of "Follow your dreams", I hope to get there someday and wish you only get better and better!

[cryoffun]

Great video, Thomas. Thanks for showing the process and propagating clever and thoughtful decisions.
Any chance you could share the dummy sheet so that there is a reference point? Thanks in advance)

[moonstar_connor]

Nice setup! We really like Copilot for budgeting. One benefit is you get a more realtime view into how your budgets are doing but the downside is you can't customize the trends that get calculated.

Would be curious to hear you dive more into how you decided when to go full time. Was it based off of savings, revenue from previous projects, etc?

[Erelium]

Would love to a deeper dive into the business side of this as well (e.g. starting your LLC, applying to publish on different platforms, creating your business account and website) that you mentioned briefly in your '6 Months' video

[nathanfranck]

I've been maintaining spreadsheets for a while now and have a SUPER solid grasp of where my money is going, and I can definitely say that I cannot quit my job 🙂 Wish my wife could work but it's a mix of health issues and generally needing to care-take while I be the salary earner

.... However I have a fantasy of being laid off, going on Canada Employment Insurance and using the money (while job searching) to build my own game. The calculation goes that after 10 months I would be out of savings, so it'd be tough still.

[elliotdematteis]

Great video, super important to have a budget and a plan just starting a business, even if it's just a business of 1.

[BigDaddyGameDev]

Great video! Could you share the finance template?

[WeenieWalkerGames]

Very cool! As an accountant in my day job, I created similar spreadsheets when I was tracking my spending, even though I knew I couldn't quit my job. Of course, once I got married, that entire spreadsheet went out the window! Thankfully I had already paid off my student loans and had a sizeable nest egg for the down payment on a house by that point. Our budgeting now is more estimating cash flow in case we need to borrow from our investment account for large/emergency purchases. Love the graphs and other visuals you created too. So did you only keep this going until you quit or is this something you are still using daily? Looks like you did this as a monthly task, which would make this easier; for my personal budgeting, since I tracked nearly every penny (being an uptight accountant), I had to do it almost daily or I would forget something if it didn't come with a receipt.

[RehtseStudio]

I created a spreadsheet with formulas that, when I add my income for that day, will tell me how much I had cleaned when expenses are removed.

[Ace-igvs]

Just wing it man, you'll make it!

[Jaime-egeb]

How many months of your average monthly expense did you save before you left?

[rickypan]

Wow this is amazing! Where do you live? Rent is like 20 times as much here