How Much Money Should I Have Saved Before I Quit My Job to Start My Own Firm?

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You want to start your own interior design firm, but are you financially prepared? You sketch a logo idea, design your dream studio, and imagine the clients that will first walk through your door. But then you open your banking app and feel your heart sink into your stomach. At some point, money will stop being an abstract “someday” conversation and evolve into a real spreadsheet on your laptop. Could you actually live on this and fund a firm at the same time? Designers are trained to juggle budgets for clients. Doing it for yourself feels different. It’s awkward, to put a price on your dream. Still, you have to have this conversation with yourself (and possibly your family) before handing in your notice.

Running a firm in Houston, Laura U Design Collective COO Melissa Grove and CEO Laura Umansky have watched designers leave to start studios; Laura did it herself two decades ago. Designers who branch out and actually succeed understood their costs and gave themselves room to be new at something again. The number in that bank account simply reflected their planning. It’s not a one-size fits all situation, but there are some guidelines to follow. So, how much money should you have saved before you quit your job to start your own design firm? Let’s get into it.

How Much Runway Do You Really Need?

If you ask five advisors how much money you should save, you will probably hear five different versions of “at least six months” or “a full year.” Those ranges can be helpful, but they can also feel vague and impersonal. What matters more is what that time frame actually covers in your specific life and market. Six months of expenses in a small town might stretch further than six months in a major coastal city.

Start on the personal side. List your rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, car payments, health insurance, child care, student loans, and the small things that quietly add up, like streaming services or regular takeout. Some of those will stay fixed. Some can go on a diet while you build. You do not have to move into a bare apartment and eat instant noodles every night, unless you want to. You might simply decide that for one year you will travel less, shop less, and cook more so that your savings last longer.

Then you layer in the business costs. The moment you register a firm, your cost structure will change. Even a lean interior design studio typically carries software, liability insurance, bookkeeping support, a website, sample storage, and a bit of marketing. That is before you rent a studio or hire anyone. The first pass at this list will probably miss something. That is normal. It is better to overshoot a little than to pretend the costs do not exist.

You might land on a savings goal that covers several months of personal and business expenses. You might also find that the number feels impossible if you look at savings alone. That is when designers start to mix in other ingredients: a small business loan, a partner’s income, a home office instead of a studio for year one. The “right” runway is rarely one tidy savings number. It is a mix of cash, credit, support, and a willingness to live a bit smaller for a while.

Case Study: Laura Started Her Firm with a Business Loan

When we asked Laura how she approached money before launching Laura U, she didn’t describe a rigid formula that every single designer must follow. After all, the way you fund your business will be personal to you.

“When I left my last position to start Laura U, I did not have a perfect formula but I did have a cushion,” she explains. “I took out a small business loan that covered a modest studio and retail storefront, a bit of starting inventory, and roughly six months of both personal and business expenses. That was my runway. That breathing room let me focus on landing my first clients without making desperate decisions. You do not need a huge runway, but you do need clarity on your costs: rent, software, insurance, marketing. Then double it. The first year usually costs more and takes longer than you expect.”

Again, Laura’s experience is somewhat unique to her and her firm. Retail frontage in Houston when she started looks different from a digital-first studio run from a dining room table now. Still, the principles translate. She knew what she needed to live, what her studio would cost in its leanest form, and how many months of that stack she wanted buffered. Instead of waiting until she had all of it in cash, she blended savings with a straightforward loan and clear boundaries on how that money would be used.

There is a subtle but important detail in her advice. She talks about “desperate decisions.” That might mean saying yes to a client who talks down your fees, taking on work outside your style just to fill a gap, or tolerating a project that treats you like a vendor instead of a creative partner. A healthy cushion cannot eliminate every hard choice, yet it can give you enough power to pause and ask, “Is this project worth the energy, or am I saying yes because my account balance is low?”

Be Careful When It Comes to Sneaky Costs

Many designers are fairly accurate about the cost of rent and furniture. The invisible costs sneak up on you later. When you’re humming along and too busy to catch subscriptions slip through on auto-renew, you’ll see little costs add up and overtake the budget. We asked Melissa which ongoing costs catch people off guard once the firm gets busy.

“Subscriptions and anything that automatically renews,” she says. “It is important to audit these every year because of headcount changes, process updates, and all sorts of situations where automation has a cost. Also, it is important to invest in the marketing that generates clients, which usually comes with a financial commitment. For us, this is one of our largest expenses, second only to wages, so it is very important to keep track of which marketing initiatives work and which ones do not.”

In other words, the things that seem super small at first can quietly snowball out of control. Project management tools, rendering platforms, file storage, CRM, bookkeeping software, email marketing, calendaring, moodboard apps. Each one seems reasonable on its own. Together, they start to rival your rent if you are not paying attention.

Marketing deserves its own line in that conversation. New studio owners sometimes assume that word of mouth will carry them for the first year. Sometimes it does. More often, visibility comes from a mix of social media, photography, public relations, sponsored placements, and in-person events. None of that is free. You might photograph one key project beautifully instead of five on your phone. You might hire a consultant for a short, intense engagement instead of trying to piece together a strategy from random advice. Whatever you choose, it helps to treat marketing as a core cost rather than an afterthought.

Personal Safety Nets and Risk Tolerance

Money on paper is one thing. Money in the context of your wider life is another. Two designers with the same savings can feel very different about risk depending on who else contributes to their household, whether they have children, and how comfortable they are with uncertainty. You do not have to match someone else’s courage level. You just have to know your own.

If you are the sole earner in your household, you will probably want a longer runway and more conservative assumptions about how quickly projects will close. You might plan to keep a part-time role or consulting work for the first year, not because you lack faith in your firm, but because you prefer to spread the risk. There is nothing less “entrepreneurial” about that. It is simply a different kind of strategy.

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If you share expenses with a partner who has a steady paycheck, you might feel comfortable with a shorter runway and a more aggressive growth plan. That does not mean you ignore the numbers. It just means that your safety net includes more than your personal account balance. You still want clarity on what happens if timelines slip. You still want agreements around how long the household will subsidize the experiment and what happens if that period needs to stretch.

It also helps to consider your own tolerance for stress. Some people are energized by a lean bank account and a high-stakes month. Others shut down. There is no moral judgment attached to either response. It is practical to ask yourself which category you fall into and plan a runway that respects that tendency.

What To Have In Place Before You Resign

Let’s say you have done the math and settled on a target. Before you send that resignation email and schedule your exit interviews, it helps to build a small ecosystem around your number so that the transition feels less like a cliff and more like a ramp. Money in the bank is one part. Cash flow and commitments are another.

Ideally, you have one or two warm leads that could turn into early projects. They do not need to be signed or fully scoped. Even a sincere conversation with a past client, a friend in real estate, or a contractor who wants a design partner can shift how your first months feel. You also want a basic brand presence: a simple site or portfolio page, a professional email address, and a clean way for leads to contact you.

You’ll also need to set up a separate business account so that you can track studio income and expenses without digging through personal transactions. This, by itself, will teach you a lot about how your money behaves. Within a few months, you’ll be able to identify patterns in cash flow. You’ll notice where you consistently overspend and how consistently money comes in. The earlier you start that tracking, the more financially fluent you’ll be.

Finally, think about your “oh no” plan. If you reach month four and the pipeline looks thinner than expected, what levers are you willing to pull? Could you cut a software tool, take on one consulting assignment, or pause a discretionary expense at home? Considering these options in a calm state tends to make them easier to use if you need them in a not so calm state.

What You Owe Yourself Financially

You owe yourself a runway that matches your reality, not your comparison point. Looking at another designer’s launch story can be inspiring, but it can also distort your sense of what is normal. It is easy to forget how much support sat behind those stories: family loans, inherited homes, a spouse with stable income. Your path might look less glossy on Instagram and still be entirely intelligent.

You also owe yourself honesty about your rates. It is incredibly common for early-stage studio owners to undercharge because they are eager to fill their calendars. That choice chips away at the very runway you worked so hard to build. When your fee structure covers your time, your overhead, and a reasonable profit, your savings stretch further because each project actually supports the business. When you price too low, the opposite happens. You feel busy and strangely broke.

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You also owe yourself an honest conversation about your tolerance for debt and risk. Some designers are comfortable using a line of credit as a shock absorber for delayed invoices or one-time investments like a rebrand. Others want to avoid borrowing entirely. Whichever camp you fall into, write down your limits before you are tempted. How much are you willing to borrow, at what rate, and for which kinds of expenses? A clear rule like “I reserve debt for assets that last several years, not for everyday operating costs” can protect your future self.

What You Don’t Need Before You Launch

You do not need a multi-year cushion, a fully built-out team, or a flagship studio on day one. In fact, those things can weigh you down if you fund them too early. A beautifully styled office with no clients still needs rent, utilities, and cleaning. A full-time hire before you have a stable pipeline creates pressure to accept every inquiry, even the ones that drain you or fly in the face of your values.

You also do not need total certainty. Some numbers will stay fuzzy until you actually see the costs play out in real time. Your estimates for how long it takes to complete a full-service project might shift after two or three real cycles. Your pricing model might need a few rounds of refinement. Expect that. Build it into your plan instead of treating it as failure. The point of a runway is not to avoid every mistake. It is to give you space to learn without immediate collapse.

Anyway, the more you talk to studio owners who made the leap, the more you’ll hear a similar story regardless of how they financed or what they saved. They wish they had started tracking their own costs sooner. They wish they had raised their rates earlier. Very few say, “I wish I had waited five more years to save the perfect amount.”

Ready to step away from your current job? Read “What Should I Tell My Boss Before Leaving to Start My Own Interior Design Firm?“

Thank you to Laura Umansky and Melissa Grove for sharing their experiences so candidly with us.