Feast or Famine: A Freelancer's Plan for Turning Irregular Paychecks Into Stability

Kelli Frazier is a writer, editor, and independent-community coach who has spent her career helping creative professionals build businesses that can survive their own success. After more than a decade as a staff editor, she went freelance and learned the feast-and-famine cycle the hard way: a brilliant first year, a devastatingly quiet second quarter, and a tax bill that nearly ended the experiment. She rebuilt her finances from the ground up, and the systems she developed—baseline budgets, percentage-based saving, and a strict separation between feast months and famine months—became the foundation of her coaching practice and, eventually, this book.

Her writing on business, careers, and personal finance has appeared in national business and lifestyle publications, and she has spoken to audiences of freelancers, independent consultants, and creative entrepreneurs about turning irregular income into lasting stability. She has also built budgeting templates and financial planning worksheets now used by thousands of self-employed workers, and she continues to take on select client work to keep her own systems honest. Kelli lives in Colorado with her family and two extremely opinionated dogs. When she is not writing about money, she is hiking, reading, or testing a new spreadsheet for reasons no one in her household fully understands.