I wrote this during my freelance years, staring at my bank app at the end of every month. The numbers I was chasing then and the numbers I chase now are completely different. The mindset — disturbingly — is the same.

My fingers trembled. Every month-end, opening the banking app. My body already knew before the screen loaded. Not enough again.

Freelance income is a roller coaster. One month: 3 million won. Next month: 300,000. If a client ghosts — zero. Getting used to this instability took two years. Honestly — I'm still not fully used to it.

In Korea, "monthly income target" is a concept that belongs to the salaried world. Same amount, same date, every month. Predictable. Stable. On that stability, you take out loans, buy apartments, plan weddings.

Freelancers don't have that foundation. Every month starts at zero. No matter how much you earned this month — next month is zero again. This is the price of freedom. The price nobody mentions.

My first monthly income goal was 1.5 million won — about $1,100. Barely enough to cover rent and food in Seoul. Reaching that number took four months. When I hit it — no joy. The next target materialized instantly. 3 million. Then 5 million. Then.

I wrote before about owning less. Reduce what you own, reduce what you need to earn. When I moved to Europe, I applied this principle. My cost of living in Berlin was lower than Seoul. Not because Berlin is cheap — because I needed less.

Lowering the number let me breathe. When I realized I could live on 1 million won instead of 1.5 — the world got wider. I didn't become free by earning more. I became free by needing less.

But here's the strange part. The anxiety stays the same regardless of the number.

Earning 1.5 million, earning 5 million, earning more — the trembling when I opened the bank app at month-end was nearly identical. I'd assumed the anxiety would disappear once the number got big enough. It didn't. The baseline shifted upward. The size of the dread stayed constant.

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This isn't just a freelancer problem. Salaried people carry the same anxiety — it just takes a different shape. Freelancers worry "will I earn enough this month?" Office workers worry "what if I lose this position?" The weight is the same. The container is different.

Eventually I started reverse-engineering income from the life I wanted. Not "how much should I earn?" but "how do I want to live?" — and then calculating the minimum that life requires.

The number right now — I won't say. The number itself doesn't matter. What matters is that I chose it. Not a salary table someone else designed. A number that comes from the shape of my own life.

I still tremble when I open the banking app at month-end. But the meaning of the trembling has changed. It used to be fear. Now it's verification. Is the life I designed still running this month.

Who set your monthly income target? And if the number were different — what would actually change?

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I write about freedom, healing, and building alone. The full archive is at soulin.co.