How much savings before going freelance? Opinions welcome!

[Winterdaysthenspring]

I work in a professional role, currently mainly in house but do some self-employed work on the side. There is a market for what I do and my aim has always been to move in the direction of fully self-employed as I near 50. What I enjoy about the self-employed work is that I can work more on my own, can mostly work from home, do not have to attend any soul destroying meetings etc.
The obvious drawback is lack of sick and holiday pay and some financial risk. I am generally risk averse and probably overestimate this as there is plenty of work in my sector and my DH works. Our mortgage is paid off. We have teen DC but some savings put by for uni.
Part of my plan to go fully self-employed is to build a very decent buffer of savings so that I feel I could easily sustain myself if there are any setbacks or I get sick. The question is how much is enough? Does anyone have a view on how many months of salary or even a general figure that would give a lot of peace of mind knowing it was there? Any views would be appreciated.

Rather than having savings (no one can tell you what you need because we don’t know how you spend or how easy it would be to find employed work again), could you go PT in your job? Or could you work evenings and weekends to start?

When Dh went self employed, he did several months of evening and weekend work building up clients and a business until it was clear that he could drop his employed role.

I would put together a business plan so you have an idea of overheads and projected incomings based on your fees. That should give you some idea. You might also consider if you need to go on gardening leave or are you banned contractually from seeking work in the industry after you leave your employer. I would assume not if you already do some self employed work, but may be client dependent.

Thank you @mindutopia they are excellent points. I am already part-time and ideally will go more part-time in the future as I make the transition. But my hope ultimately is not to have a "day job" anymore and to be completely independent. In my role I have very few overheads as I can do a lot of it online at home and then have some client facing meetings but at their own sites. There isn't an issue with gardening leave etc if I leave my current role.
The thing about making the jump completely is that it frees up the time needed to really build momentum and that is hard while also working several days a week in house. I spoke to a contact recently who said they made the leap after getting an inheritance as that meant they weren't worried about making money for a while. And that got me thinking about how much of a nest egg I would need to feel secure in that way! I didn't like to ask them what the amount was.

I'd say at least the equivalent to a year's salary. We started a business 20 years ago with £100k in the bank, young children and a mortgage. It was incredibly tight as it was 3 years before the business was able to sustain our living costs (not lavish and no holidays). But then it took off and a few years later we sold it for a lot (life changing amount) of money.

Thank you. A year's salary seems like a good starting point and is what I had in mind although my net salary is a lot lower than gross. I guess ideally I would not want to touch it but just know it's there for peace of mind in the first year. I think after so many years of being an employee it is surprisingly scary to become self-employed even though logically I know the work is there and I'm already doing it! I must be institutionalised.