This paper presents the first empirical evidence on household risk balancing behavior, i.e., strategic off-farm decisions in response to changes in expected business risk. Using Swiss FADN data, we estimate a fixed effects seemingly unrelated regression model to analyze how farm households jointly alter their levels of debt, off-farm income and consumption. Evidence suggests that in response to changes in expected business risk, farm households make strategic off-farm decisions. Our study demonstrates that part of the behavioral risk response of farm households is ignored when focusing solely on farm-level analyses and illustrates the relevance of the household risk balancing framework.