contractor work

It will help if you can maintain a fairly dispassionate sense of fiscal and, if you work from home, time management. You should be OK with eating savings during periods of no income. This means taking the longer view of your work and income situation and not letting down time freak you (or your partner!) out. Some things to think about:

• Don't eat your paycheck! Your current nice, predictable income will turn into flood or nothing. Some of what you collect will have to go to taxes, some to cover expected, but not predictable, down times. Plan to smooth that by saving some or most of what you collect. This is different from your 6-months buffer. This is to cover your expected, but not predictable, down times. You may be lucky and have a long ride with one client, but you can be dropped and have to find another on short notice. You'll also need (in the US, at least) to pay quarterly tax estimates in lieu of withholding, and your savings will need to cover that as well. You'll also pay (US, again) what your employer used to contribute to your Social-Security tax.
• You'll have to buy your own benefits. Budget for retirement contributions and health insurance to come out of your own pocket.
• If you'll be working at home, your work will always be right there and it can take some discipline to not let it stare you down. If you can't comfortably completely be either 'at work' or 'not available', it might help to have a work space you can close a door on when you're not working. Likewise, it might help to hold yourself to consistent work hours, if that's consistent with what you'll be doing. Consider a work-only phone you can shut off when you're not working or on call.
• You may be expected to provide your own tools (in the US, by the IRS for sure). Maybe that's just a laptop computer (plus a hot spare, if it's critical to doing your job) and a telephone, maybe more. Plan for that.
• No working in pajamas; dress for work, even working at home. Dressing professionally (maybe dropping the tie if one would've been required on site), starting and ending work at a specific time, and answering your phone in a business-like manner, all build your sense of competence and professionalism as well as conveying it to others. It also helps you keep a sense of separation between being at-work and not-at-work.
• Build in vacation and other down time and make yourself take it. There's no paid vacation nor any requirement for you to take any, from the client's side. You'll have to structure that yourself (that goes for sick & personal days, too). Plan it and make yourself take it - everyone needs to get away from it occasionally, even if you love what you do.
• Love what you do and look forward to doing it. If you're just tickled pink that anyone would actually pay you to play with their toys (yay!), if you can laugh all the way to the bank, it's a great motivator to do the non-work support stuff that keeps your consulting gig going. I don't know a single consultant that enjoys marketing themselves, for instance.
• Keep good records, especially financial ones, but also of what you did, who told you what, who told you what to do or not do and when. Put agreements in writing and distribute it to everyone involved so you have something to refer back to if (when!) things get sideways.