The lessons
Every idea, and the arithmetic under it
Each one is short: what it is, why it matters, the method so you could do it on paper, and one worked example. Nothing here needs the app.
Nothing marked yet. Marking is for you, not for a score — there is no percentage anywhere in this app.
Asked during the diagnosis
- The four ways money arrives
Money reaches you in one of four shapes. You sell your time to one employer. You sell your time to several buyers. You sell a finished job at a price you set. Or you sell a thing — something another person could hand over for you.
- Write the number you would have said yesterday
This app asks what you think you earn before it counts anything. Not what you can prove. What you would have told a friend.
- What the job actually pays
Gross pay is what the job pays before anything is taken off. Take that figure. Multiply it by the number of months you are actually paid for.
- Twelve months, not the good one
Everything that landed across the last twelve months, added up. Not a typical month. Not last month.
- What one piece of work sells for
The price of one finished job. And how many of them you deliver in a month.
- Price, cost, and what is left
Three figures. What one unit sells for. What one unit costs you. How many go out in a month.
- The hours nobody paid you for
Your contracted hours. Plus the extra hours you actually work. Plus the commute, if you count travel as time you sold.
- Days booked, and how long a day runs
How many days you worked across twelve months. And how long one of those days really runs.
- Every hour the job really takes
The hours one complete job takes. Including the parts you never put on the invoice.
- The attention it still takes
Roughly how many hours a month the product still needs from you.
- What one hour actually earned
Everything that came in, divided by every hour it took. That is one number. Almost nobody has ever worked out theirs.
- Essentials are smaller than you think
Rent, food, utilities, transport, medicine. Five lines. Those are your essentials — the things that do not stop when money is tight. Everything else is spending, and it goes in a separate box.
- Turning any quoted rate into a year
Lenders quote the cost in different ways. Some say a month. Some say a week. Some just name a flat extra amount. Turn every one of them into a yearly figure. The yearly figure is the only one you can compare.
- A stated share, or an open account
Money that leaves because somebody can ask you for it. Some of it has a fixed monthly figure. The rest is open. Open means the amount is decided by whoever asks, whenever they ask.
- Two divisions that locate you
Take the savings you could reach tomorrow. Divide by one month of essentials. The answer is how many months you could last with no income. That is your runway. Now take the money that arrives without you working. Divide that by essentials too. That share is your coverage.
- You aim at what you can see
A count of people you actually know who are one step ahead of you. Not famous people. Not people at the top.
- What a stranger can check in ten minutes
Three things. Somewhere a buyer can look you up. One person who will confirm what you did. One finished piece of work with a date on it.
- Three questions, multiplied
Score each skill three times, one to five. Are buyers paying for it today. Can a stranger check your evidence. How few people around you do it well. Then multiply the three scores together.
- Counting who could find you
The number of people who could come across your work on each platform, written down with today's date beside it.
- Trace one real attempt
The last time you tried to be paid. An application, a message, a quote. And the exact point where it stopped moving.
Worth reading on their own
- Why one month lies
The habit of taking a recent good month and treating it as normal.
- When one payer is most of your income
The share of your income that comes from your single largest payer.
- The number of units that pays your fixed costs
How many units you must sell each month before the line earns anything at all.
- Why the order matters more than the effort
Take the same handful of sensible actions. Do them in a different order and you get a completely different result.
- Where this data lives
Everything you type stays in this browser, on this device. There is no account, no server, and no database.