Completing your Personal Survival Budget

What is a Personal Survival Budget?

When we help entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners – like you – to write your business plan, we always ask you to complete a Personal Survival Budget (PSB). This provides a realistic overview of how much money you need to live on each month.

It helps you prepare financially for the first few months of your business, which may not turn over enough money to provide you with an income at first.

By knowing what you need to live on, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions about how to fund your business idea and whether you’ll need any extra help.

How to fill in your Personal Survival Budget

Start by inputting all of your expenses.

This can be the scary bit! But remember, being in control of your finances makes you far more likely to succeed than burying your head in the sand. So take a deep breath and dive in.

Next, input your income

Don’t include any income from your proposed business here. The point of this exercise is to work out how you’ll survive if your startup doesn’t make much money in the first three months.

Input any income you’ll get from:

• Your ongoing employment, if you will still have a full- or part-time job

• Any benefits you receive (note that your eligibility for these may change once you start your business)

• Personal savings (realistically, how much can you ‘borrow’ from yourself to live on)

• Other income (such as share dividends or income from property)

What happens next?

After you’ve completed your Personal Survival Budget, you’ll submit it as part of your Start Up Loan application.

The finance provider will make sure you’ve taken everything into consideration and can afford to survive without any income from your business. We love business startups but not if they mean someone is going to starve in the process!

Your Personal Survival budget will be considered alongside your business plan and revenue forecasts, to assess of the viability of your plan.