Nearly half of US small business owners have skipped or delayed their own paycheck to keep their company running, according to a new Patriot Software survey of 1,000 owners, managers, and recent former owners released June 17, 2026. The survey found that 47.7% have gone without their own pay and 84.4% have sacrificed their health, relationships, or mental wellbeing for the business.
For solo owners and the self-employed, these numbers are not abstract. When you are the whole business, skipping your own pay is often the first lever you pull, and the personal cost lands squarely on you.
What The Survey Found
The strain shows up in sleep and stress. Some 53.5% of owners lose sleep over the business at least a few times a week, and 47.2% say financial pressure has gotten worse over the past 12 months.
Healthcare sits near the center of the problem. Nearly a third of owners, 29.4%, named affordable healthcare as the single change that would most reduce their burnout, a reminder that benefits weigh heavily on people who fund their own.
Despite the pressure, most owners are not giving up. About 73% still believe in owning a small business, with 30.8% saying they love it and cannot imagine doing anything else, while 42.2% believe in it but feel exhausted.
Why This Matters For Self-Employed Owners
Skipping your paycheck can feel responsible in a tight month, but done repeatedly, it hides a cash-flow problem and quietly transfers the business’s risk onto your household.
The scale is large. There are more than 36 million small businesses in the US, employing 62.3 million people, or nearly 46% of the private workforce, so this is a widespread strain rather than a personal failing.
What Self-Employed Owners Should Do Next
Pay yourself a set amount on a set schedule and treat it as a fixed cost, then build a cash buffer of a few months of expenses so you are not the shock absorber every slow month.
Tackle the healthcare cost directly by comparing marketplace plans, a spouse’s plan, and a health savings account paired with a high-deductible plan. Price coverage into your rates rather than absorbing it silently.
What To Watch Next
Watch whether financial pressure eases as interest rates and consumer demand shift, since the survey ties much of the burnout to money rather than workload alone.
Policy changes can help at the margins, including the IRS’s finalized no-tax-on-tips rules for self-employed workers, which put a bit more cash back in some owners’ pockets.
Photo by ThisisEngineering: Unsplash
