I strongly agree with this. I freelance, and having the savings to cover slow periods is not just reassuring, it also helps me advance professionally. I feel sa

I strongly agree with this. I freelance, and having the savings to cover slow periods is not just reassuring, it also helps me advance professionally. I feel safe passing on bad clients and insisting on my rate, because I'm not living check-to-check. I'm not saying you should keep your day job until you have a full 6 months, but you should have something, and you should aggressively save until you've reached 6 (or more). I also like to have one big (20 hours/week) project at a time, along with a bunch of smaller long-term relationships that bring in steady low-volume work. That means even if you're between big projects, you still have some work and some income. I don't think I've gone 3 weeks with truly zero work since I started freelancing.