How much was your warchest?

[PerfectStorm]

Enough for 6 months as I recall, and I'm not sure I would've tried it if it was less than 3.

As it was, Client #1 took 2 months vetting me before accepting - and this was following a couple of months of interviewing, so I was 4 months in the hole by the time I started

Plain sailing since, no money worries even when benched, but that initial pinch point could ruin someone

[Antman]

£0 or pretty much close to it, we weren't keeping our heads above water with a permy salary. I found a client that was willing to wait the 1 month period and it's been pretty good since then.

[uk contractor]

No warchest first time I ever went contracting well over 20 years ago had 4 weeks perm salary notice as I had more than enough of the perm banking environment & the petty management. Took my chances & tripled my salary as a contractor within a few weeks.

No warchest nowadays its long gone but have at several times had up to £50K cash at the bank & sometimes preferred the downtime to live life to the full & spend quality time with loved ones (before they passed away) instead of working all year.

[Old Greg]

As per title, I'm curious to know how big a warchest you guys had when you switched to contracting.

How many months/years could you have survived without a gig?

-5k. Wouldn't have been pretty if the gig got canned but no kids back then.

[l35kee]

£0, in fact it was probably negative lol, had a stay at home wife and 2 toddlers to support too.

3 month notice period meant I had to quit before having a role lined up. Oh, and I was going on holiday for 3 weeks after leaving the permie role (2 weeks of saves up holiday pay helped cover that).

[jamesbrown]

About one tenth of sasguru's prodigious wealth.

Interesting that so many started contracting with close to feck all...

[flamel]

I'm glad you said "was"
Started with zip the built up 6 months but as I'm long term on the bench it's now almost the sq root of feck all

[sal]

Around 6 months, even as a permie if my bank account fell lower than 3 months worth of living expenses I would get anxious.

[radish2008]

£0 and around £30k debt.

Massive risk.

Now I've got 2 years breadline money and no debt.

And I'm still not happy

[ladymuck]

I was in quite a fortunate position when I started. I had sold a flat and bought a house and inadvertently ended up with a years worth of money in the bank. I took time out from work and finished a HNC in Computing that I'd been doing at night classes (I would have gotten a HND but couldn't be bothered to do a particularly dull module). As the course was winding up in April/May, I started job hunting and landed my first contract gig with my local County Council in the May. Started with an umbrella company while I worked out what this contracting malarkey was all about and then incorporated in the July when I realised this was the life for me.