Season “How to Make 250K Per Year” · Episode 1
Why 250K
Think · 2 November 2026
The numbers here are rough. Germany, 2026, one person running a GmbH with a holding company above it, married, private health insurance, as much AI and automation as possible. I am not a tax advisor. Before you build anything on these numbers, sit down with one.
01
Twenty thousand a month
Around 2018, in my mid-30s, I started my GmbH. Before that I had worked for startups for about 10 years, from 2008/2009 to 2018. I already had three kids and a family, so I could not have started with zero.
My first freelance jobs came through the network from those startup years, mostly consulting. My first full year brought about 75,000 euros. That was a privilege, and I know it.
250,000 euros a year comes to roughly 20,800 euros a month. I round it down to 20,000, because that is the number people actually react to.
I set the goal in 2018, the year I started, in my first business coaching.
I picked 250K as the goal for this whole season. Not 100K, not a million. In this episode I show you why, line by line, with the table I use.
One honest thing before the table. 250K is a target. My first full year brought 75K, and your first year as a freelancer will very likely not bring 250K either. Today, as of November 2026, my revenue is about 250,000 euros. Depending on the year, 40 to 60 percent of it is still sold time.
I think it is very important to understand at the very beginning where you can start. I could start from a network and a consulting income. If you are younger, your costs are lower, and you can start from somewhere else. Consulting is what let me build my products. Honestly, I am not a fan of consulting as the long-term path, because for me it does not lead anywhere further.
So why aim for a number you will not hit in year one? Because the number tells you what to build. And to see that, it helps to look at the other way to 20K a month first.
02
The employee route
Most people never get to 20,000 euros a month as an employee. Fewer than 1 in 100 full-time employees in Germany gets there: in 2024 the top 1 percent started at 213,286 euros gross a year, and 20,000 a month is about 240,000 (Destatis, April 2025).
The jobs that do pay it exist. Especially before 50, they usually come with long hours, the structures of a big company and the politics that go with them.
That is totally fine. There is nothing bad about it, and plenty of people choose it on purpose and do well.
What you give up on that route is the last word on your own decisions. Your calendar, your projects, the year you would like to slow down: someone above you has a say in all of it. That is the whole point of this season. I am after the authority over my own decisions, and the money is what makes it possible.
So the question changes. It is no longer "can I earn 20K a month". It becomes "what does 20K a month have to pay for when I own the decisions".
03
What 250K pays for
Here is the business side, per year. One person, no employees, a few freelancers where needed.
| Business, per year | Euros |
|---|---|
| Revenue | 250,000 |
| My salary, 10,000 gross a month, plus the employer's health insurance subsidy | −125,000 |
| Leased car | −9,000 |
| Laptop (100 a month) and phone (100 a month), both leased, plus insurance | −2,700 |
| Tax advisor, bookkeeping done with AI | −4,000 |
| Software and AI | −5,000 |
| Insurance, IHK, bank, work travel | −5,000 |
| Profit | ≈ 99,000 |
| Corporate and trade tax, about 30 % | −30,000 |
| Left in the company | ≈ 69,000 |
| To the holding, 10 % of revenue, every year, for retirement and investing | −25,000 |
| Free buffer | ≈ 44,000 |
One line in that table is worth more than it looks: the tax. For me, understanding the German tax system was one of the biggest levers. I do not claim to understand it fully. Early on I paid for a very expensive workshop to learn how it works, not just how to pay taxes. I did not want to tell a tax advisor "do my accounting and that's it". There is a lot of architecture in how a business and its taxes can be set up.
Everybody has to pay taxes, and that makes sense. You can also set things up so the money goes to good use. Used wisely, the German system leaves you more to invest, and money that gets invested helps the economy too. This is not about avoiding taxes at any price. I would never move my business abroad, and not paying tax in Germany was never the plan. The plan was more money to invest. For comparison: on the top part of a high salary, income tax and solidarity surcharge take about 44 percent.
And here is the private side, per month.
| Private, per month | Euros |
|---|---|
| Net from 10,000 gross (married) | ≈ 7,700 |
| Rent | −2,500 |
| Food, activities, travel | −2,500 |
| Insurance incl. health, school, other fixed costs | −2,500 |
| Left | ≈ 200 |
Travel is in the second line: 10,000 to 15,000 euros a year. For us that is mainly the summer: six weeks in Italy by car, the whole family, Airbnb houses, no luxury, about 10,000 euros.
This is a good everyday life. A family that is looked after, holidays, a car, a school, and nobody working themselves into the ground to keep it running. It is also not a life of luxury, and it does not need to be.
On paper the private side is tight: about 200 euros left a month. The room to breathe sits one level up, in the company: the 44,000.
04
The bad year
Say another Corona comes and everything shuts down.
For me, the hardest hit in Corona was not a number, it was focus. With three kids at home, it was horrible to concentrate on the business. So a bad year does not only mean less revenue. It can also mean that your time suddenly is not yours anymore. For me it was also a reminder of why focus is a superpower.
I ran the same costs against smaller years. My rough math, nothing changed except revenue:
| Revenue | Left after tax | To the holding | Free |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250,000 | ≈ 69,000 | 25,000 | ≈ 44,000 |
| 200,000 | ≈ 35,000 | 25,000 | ≈ 10,000 |
| 175,000 | ≈ 17,000 | ≈ 17,000 | 0 |
| 150,000 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Look at the 200,000 row. A year that comes in 50,000 euros short still pays my salary, still puts the full 25,000 into the holding, and still leaves something over. The free buffer runs out around 175,000. At 150,000 I get my salary and nothing goes to my retirement.
That is what the buffer buys. A bad year stays a bad year. It does not become a year where I take any client who calls, or stop paying into my future, or go looking for a job.
And it works the other way too. In a year where I have more time, the buffer lets me choose. I can grow. I can invest more. I can try something, Bitcoin for example. I can spend a little more on nice things. If you have no kids, the buffer is bigger still.
So the buffer is 44,000 euros of choice.
05
Why not 150, 200 or 300
Every step on the ladder buys something different.
| Target | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| 150K | Your salary. No pension. |
| 200K | A pension, until the first bad year eats it. |
| 250K | Family, the future, a bad year and a choice. |
| 300K | Room for your first hire. You don't need it to live well. |
250K is the highest number I can still run myself. A few freelancers around me, AI doing the bookkeeping and the routine work, no employees. Above that, the next sensible step is usually a hire, and with a hire come payroll, management and the responsibility for someone else's income. All fine, and a different business from the one I want.
Below 250K, the first bad year already reaches into the retirement money.
06
What one hour has to earn
There is no single hourly rate. You have projects, and the better you get, the more they pay.
When you start out as a freelancer and go to clients directly, you can probably charge about 50 to 60 euros an hour. On Upwork you will probably have to negotiate a bit.
So it is tempting to pick a number, something like "I want 80 euros an hour". Here is what 80 does to your year:
| Calculation | Result |
|---|---|
| Full-time, 44 weeks × 40 hours | about 1,760 hours a year |
| × 80 euros | ≈ 141,000 |
That is roughly half the target, and it takes the whole working day, every working day.
Now turn it around. Say you want to work 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, and make 20,000 a month.
| Calculation | Result |
|---|---|
| 4 hours × 5 days | 20 hours a week |
| 52 weeks minus 6 weeks holiday, minus 2 weeks for public holidays and sick days | 44 weeks |
| 20 hours × 44 weeks | 880 hours a year |
| 250,000 ÷ 880 hours | ≈ 285 euros an hour |
And not every hour is billable. Sales and admin take their share. If 3 of your 4 hours go to clients, you have 660 billable hours, and each one has to bring about 380 euros.
So 20,000 a month from hourly billing alone means about 300 euros an hour. Really good lawyers charge around 300 to 400. It is not impossible. It is the point where, at some stage, you need to switch: from selling hours to building digital assets. Here is how that mix could change over time. These are example numbers to show the shape, not my own figures.
| Stage | Freelance | Digital assets | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build: full-time client work, from 60 to 80 an hour over the first years | ≈ 106,000 to 141,000 | 0 | ≈ 106,000 to 141,000 |
| Shift: client work plus the first assets | 130,000 | 70,000 | 200,000 |
| Target: 20 hours a week, 660 billable hours at about 150 an hour | 100,000 | 150,000 | 250,000 |
In the target stage you work half the hours of the build stage and earn roughly twice as much.
Which leaves the years in the build stage, when your rate is far from 300. I look at freelancing in those years as paid learning: someone gives you money to learn. You are not yet getting the 300 to 400 an hour your goal needs, and nobody pays that for something you are still learning. That is fine, because they are paying you to learn it.
Early on I had projects that paid only 150 to 200 euros, and I put 10 or 20 hours into each of them. The client did not pay for those hours. I did it because it was a nice challenge and I could learn something.
One client used three tools that had never been connected before, and the data did not arrive correctly from one tool in the next. I had to learn how that works. Projects like that are how I understood my Upwork profile at the beginning.
Where that led is the episode “Start-ups: the fastest school”. The short version: my niche was the mix of technology and marketing, and on Upwork that set me apart. Tracking and martech problems sit between marketing and tech, and I could stand on both sides.
07
How you get there
20,000 a month is possible outside a job as well.
The path I am taking has three stages.
- Grow a freelance business. Sell what you know to clients, by the project or by the month.
- Use part of that money to build digital assets. For me that is mainly intellixOne, a marketing software that has existed in code since March 2024.
- Let the composition shift. Maybe a few freelance jobs stay. Most of the money comes from the assets.
The buffer from chapter 4 is where stage 2 gets its money. That is why the table matters even in a year where you are far from 250K: it shows you how big the buffer has to be before you can build anything next to the client work.
Where I stand myself, as of November 2026: 40 to 60 percent of my revenue is still sold time, depending on the year. There is no proven return from intellixOne to my time yet. So I am in the middle of stage 2.
08
This week
Take the private table from chapter 3 and fill in your own numbers: rent, food and activities and travel, insurance and school and fixed costs. Add them up and multiply by twelve.
That is the yearly floor your business has to carry before one euro goes into your future. Write it down next to my 7,500.
09
The open question
I don't know yet how many years the shift from stage 1 to stage 3 takes.
More in this season: “Start-ups: the fastest school”. How the mix of marketing and tech became the niche my business was built on.
10
Changelog
Chapter "The bad year": what Corona hit for me, focus.
rewritten from scratch with the full breakdown: business and private tables, the bad year, the hourly rate, the start in 2018 and the tax lever. The 1 November version is replaced.