The Challenge: A Single Income, High Expenses, and Limited Time
For context, here’s my situation...
Balancing work and family has always been a challenge, but in February 2024, everything changed when my wife, Catherine, faced a sudden medical crisis. What was meant to be a routine outpatient procedure took a devastating turn—a blood clot led to a traumatic post-surgery cardiac arrest, leaving her hospitalized for eight weeks. She suffered an anoxic stroke and brain injury. A year later, Catherine has made tremendous progress, but she is still unable to speak (oral apraxia) or use her hands for basic tasks like hygiene and eating.
I plan to write a more in-depth article about this life-changing event and what I’ve learned as my wife’s caregiver, but for now, here’s a small glimpse into my daily responsibilities. I assist her with all hygiene needs—bathing, bathroom, brushing her hair, washing her face, and brushing her teeth. I administer all her nutrition through a g-tube four times a day, give medication twice daily, and handle home therapy like hand massage and e-stim therapy. Soon, she’ll resume outpatient speech and occupational therapy, requiring me to commute and accompany her. Not to mention paperwork, finances, and scheduling.
Catherine also requires someone present in our household 24 hours a day, due to her having a high risk of choking from her limitation with swallow control. This makes it difficult me to leave for extended periods of time. However more recently our 15 year old son will occasionally stay with her so that I can go out for 2-4 hours to get some exercise, or handle errands such as grocery shopping. And even though this is helpful, the concern always lurks in the back of my mind that he doesn't need to face an emergency while I am out.
A New Awareness & Purpose
As you can imagine, my wife's medical condition has not only forced me to take on an even greater role as her caregiver, while ensuring our financial stability, and remaining steadfast and healthy for us and our two sons–it has forced me to rethink how I manage my work, time, and income to sustain our family’s needs.
This has also required me to learn how to provide a whole lot of patience, faith, hope, love, and emotional support to get through the last year–day by day, week by week, and month by month.
Both of our families and friends are all hopeful and confident that Catherine will continue to heal and regain functions, but the truth is, that I need more help than I alone have the capacity to sustain for the long-term.
Before this happened, even with two incomes, I knew that my work processes needed to improve. We often acknowledge that time is limited, yet most people rarely do anything about it. I discuss this limited time constraint in one of the lessons in my course—but when we truly account for the time required for caregiving, self-care, and life’s obligations, it forces us to reconsider how much influence work and clients should have over us.
I have not raised my rates in years despite inflation, higher costs of living, more commitments, and more stress, and this has to change...
My business model, pricing structure, and approach to work needs a complete overhaul to ensure financial stability while allowing me to be fully present for my family.
Work should be intentional.
It should contribute to life rather than consume it.
- I support a family of four—two kids (15 and 11) and a wife who is unable to work due to a severe brain injury.
- Because of her condition, I handle the majority of household responsibilities, keeping sons on track, and caregiving.
- I run my own web design and development business, specializing in Shopify and WordPress.
- Realistically, I can personally only dedicate max 750–1,000 real project hours per year. This isn’t about working less by choice—it’s about prioritizing caregiving, family responsibilities, and life’s unavoidable demands first. The limited hours I have must be spent intentionally on high-impact work. As I expand into other ventures like digital products, the available time for client projects will be even less, making it critical to structure my pricing accordingly.
- I need private health insurance that covers real medical expenses.
- I’m not interested in a bare-minimum survival budget—I need an income that covers rent, insurance, healthcare, savings, and retirement.
How Much Does It Actually Cost to Support a Family?
Let’s break this estimate down in real numbers.
This isn’t a "lean FIRE" budget or an extreme frugality plan—this represents an example of the real cost of living for a family of four in the United States of America in 2025 with private health insurance, a home, a car, and a safety net.
Table A: Core Expenses Breakdown
This is very challenging to represent in this small amount of space. Even with this example table I have put together it is still glaringly obvious to me that many expense categories are not even being factored in here to cover all the bases. This net-income number is also still less than half of what I really believe is a baseline number for providing a very comfortable lifestyle for my family.
I'm sure all of you "traditional" cut expenses and save until your eyes bleed, Dave Ramsey fan boys and girls will likely immediately go after some of my expense categories like recreational expenses, or vehicle payment. So, for your satisfaction here is a table where I have shaved almost all expenses down to zero, no health insurance, no dental, less groceries for a family of four, pre-paid flip phone plan, low car payment for a beater that will still likely require some annual repairs, etc.
Bare Bones Survival Budget
It's clear that it is impossible to cut to zero if you want to eat and have a home to live in, unless you want to live in your grandmother's basement or sleep on someone's couch (until they kick you out). If that is your mentality then please kindly leave this post and return to your regularly scheduled mind-numbing programs.
Attempting to get to zero expenses is not what this exercise is about. So, we are not even going to consider this last "bare bones" table–because it's head trash. Providing for a family does not mean cutting all corners and going without. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either full of crap, is naive, that person has a circumstance that you may not have, or they want you as as leverage.
Activities such as basketball camps, snowboarding, mountain biking, camping, and other adventures are in fact actually a key ingredient to cultivating healthy minds, bodies, a close family bond, and being able to show up for others at our best.
Regardless of what you believe these expenses "should" be, it is what it is, and everyone will have their own variation, so let’s factor in self-employment taxes.
To comfortably cover this budget outlined in Table A, while accounting for taxes and business expenses, I need an annual income that is presented in the following tables.
Table B: Estimating Self-Employment Taxes
- This allows for federal and state taxes (25–30%)
Now that I have a pre-tax gross income goal, I also need to factor in business expenses—including tools, software, equipment, customer acquisition costs, or even occasional help.
The table below outlines both low-end and high-end income target scenarios—showing post-tax and pre-tax income while factoring in multiple profit margin scenarios (20%, 50%, and 83%) to determine a target revenue goal.
Table C: Revenue Plan
This tells me that to maintain sustainable margins, I need to run lean. Ideally, I should keep business expenses between 10–15% of total revenue to remain profitable—without hiring employees or working an unsustainable number of hours.
The Solution: Charging Based on Value, Not Hours
With 750–1,000 available hours per year to work intentionally, an hourly billing model would not work. Even at $150/hour, it would still be a struggle to reach a sustainable income goal while maintaining a work-life balance. I've even gone as far as being ready to quit web design for this very reason.
We'll talk more about why hourly billing is flawed, but for years now I've known that I need a value-based pricing strategy—where trust, expertise, and the results I provide for clients determine my prices, not billing for the number of hours worked. Also note, that if you are running a freelance business you will NOT be spending 40 hours per week working on projects. You need to give yourself plenty of room to actually work on your business. So again, this 750-1000 hour limit is not just about personal capacity, it is also about working on business activities that are not direct client work.
Here’s the approach:
Step 1: Setting the Right Project Pricing
To reach the minimum annual income, I need to price my projects accordingly.
Table D: Project Price Options
With this structure, as long as I'm careful about not taking on more than my personal bandwidth, I could mix and match any combination of projects to meet this basic income objective, without overloading my personal capacity or burning out.
For example, securing 25 websites a year at $5,000 might seem like "success" but it becomes clear very fast that the high end revenue on this price point is $125k per year. While that is not a tiny number, it will get eaten up very fast by self-employment taxes and business expenses.
It will also likely consume a lot of time and brain energy trying to manage 25 website projects from lead to completion, and also field post-launch customer support requests. This is not very encouraging.
Perhaps, it would be better to aim for a bit more aggressive price point...
- 8 to 10 high-value e-commerce sites per year
- OR 10 to 15 mid-sized website projects
- AND/OR 1–3 high value retainer clients per month
Again, based on what I'm seeing with my numbers in Tables A-D I will really need to keep my margins high and spend less than 10% or 15% of my revenue on business expenses.
While not perfect, it is an improvement over what I have been stuck doing for years–stressed and very often barely getting by. This updated model gets me closer to earning enough to meet basic living expenses without overloading my schedule.
I also want to give myself enough margin so that if I am in fact successful at reaching my full capacity, that I have some margin to scale and hire some extra help.
And just to be clear, this is only for improving my income from offering freelance web design and development services. If you've seen my other post on Lifestyle Income vs Business Revenue, this number is still drastically low for operating a real business, especially a business that will enable me to reach bigger financial goals.
Step 2: Adjusting My Service Offerings
I plan to increase pricing on both my website packages and retainer plans to better align with my income goals and ensure they provide both value to clients and sustainability for my business.
Here’s what I intend to change:
Table E: Updated Pricing & Plans
Why These Changes Matter
- Removing the Budget Plan ($1,295/month):
- It was unsustainable and didn’t align with higher-value work.
- Adjusting the Startup Plan ($2,595 to $3,500/month):
- Increasing Small Business Plan ($4,995 to $6,500/month):
- Raising Midsize Business Plan ($7,995 to $10,000/month):
- Prioritization, quarterly UX audits, and high-touch service for e-commerce and scaling businesses.
By restructuring my retainer plans, I ensure that my time is used effectively, my expertise is valued appropriately, and my business remains financially sustainable.
I plan to restructure my pricing and services to reflect this new approach. Here’s what I intend to change:
- Increase Project-Based Pricing
- Previously, small business websites were $3,200 – $6,400.
- Now, they will start at $5,000 – $10,000.
- Premium e-commerce projects are $20,000+.
- Eliminate Free Consulting & Low-Cost Monthly Plans
- Phase out low-budget retainers to focus on premium clients.
- A package will be created for UX Consulting
- A package will be created for special Web / UI features
- High-Value Service Package Ideas
- Site Optimization: $5,000
- UX/UI Feature Release Design: $7,500
- Full E-Commerce Overhaul: $20,000+
Step 3: Managing Rate Increases Without “Sticker Shock”
Raising rates is always tricky—especially for existing clients. Here’s what I need to do to ensure a smooth transition:
- Offer Legacy Pricing for a Limited Time to existing clients while introducing updated rates for new clients.
- Communicate the Value Increase Clearly, ensuring clients understand the improvements in service, efficiency, and results.
- Provide Transition Options, such as prepaid retainers or multi-month packages, to help clients adjust to the new pricing structure gradually.
To continue delivering high-quality web development services, I need to adjust my pricing. For existing valued clients, their current rates will be honored for another six months. After that, I will introduce new packages that are designed to better serve their long-term needs.
Final Thoughts: The Reality of Self-Employment and Family Responsibility
The truth is, being a self-employed web developer while also being a primary caregiver and sole provider requires intentional strategy.
- Pricing projects based on VALUE, not time allows for financial security.
- Focusing on fewer, high-value clients prevents burnout.
- Setting realistic income goals ($140K–$160K) ensures stability without sacrificing family time.
If you're in a similar situation—whether as a freelancer, entrepreneur, or consultant—the key takeaway is this:
- Prioritize clients who understand value.
- Charge not just what your work is worth, but what is necessary to live.
- Design your business to support your life—not the other way around.
- Don't forget to factor taxes and business expenses into pricing.
Do you believe these numbers are too ambitious? If you do, then I can guarantee that you have not put much thought into your own lifestyle design, or have not yet been faced with a life changing event that makes it even clearer how flawed that most traditional ways of earning a living can be.
Would love to hear from others balancing work and caregiving.
How have you structured your income to stay financially stable?
