Try to plan work ahead with paying clients so you have some guarantee you'll have some income.
I personally moved to contracting, got a 6 month contract, which wasn't too dissimilar to being employee.
That gave me time in between contracts to build products, which ramped up.
Incidentally I went back to FTE with side projects for personal reasons (paternity leave in primis) and I'm now about to do the jump to product only. I'm not excluding doing the odd contract if money is low in the future.
Savings wise we're a bit on the extreme side, we can either buy a house or live for 15 years without work.
I personally moved to contracting, got a 6 month contract, which wasn't too dissimilar to being employee.
That gave me time in between contracts to build products, which ramped up. Incidentally I went back to FTE with side projects for personal reasons (paternity leave in primis) and I'm now about to do the jump to product only. I'm not excluding doing the odd contract if money is low in the future.
Savings wise we're a bit on the extreme side, we can either buy a house or live for 15 years without work.
I would say 1-2 year of savings would be plenty.