Freelance Finance

Once, when I was just starting out as a freelancer, a colleague asked: “How is your freelance life going?” Without missing a beat, I replied, “Great! I’m very busy!” She responded: “It’s easy to be busy. But are you actually making a living?” She was more right about this than I was willing to admit […]

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The problems that arise with money and the freelance life are often ones of organization. If you set up your financial accounts properly, your financial goals will be right in front of you every time you check your finances. The way I see it, every independent worker should have at least FOUR bank accounts:
1. The […]

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Mire and I used to sweat out the tax season, living in fear that our accountant’s verdict would throw us in debt for years to come. But we don’t fear tax season anymore. Why? Because we’ve starting doing something many freelancers don’t, namely, save to pay our taxes. While not as glamorous as saving for […]

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Time is money. The minute you get a freelance assignment gig, calculate how much time the client is buying from you. Unless you are absolutely dying to do a particular project, a $500 project should buy fewer of your hours than a $1,000, $2,500 or $7,500 project. I have written $1,500 to $2,500 articles in […]

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The newly self-employed often don’t realize that they must pay their own taxes—in the form of “estimated” taxes—because they don’t have an employer who automatically deducts taxes from each paycheck for them. How to do it simply: Find an accountant who handles self-employed people, and have him or her figure out what percentage you need […]

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As the Oscars approach, I made a point the other night of watching Billy Wilder’s 1960 film, “The Apartment,” which won the Academy Awards that year for Best Picture, Best Director, and Original Screenplay, among others. The film got me thinking about the trade-offs all self-employed people make. The movie tells the story of a […]

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We hear it all the time: “I’m young. Why should I save for retirement now?” Here’s the short answer: Because the power of compound interest works in your favor the more years your money sits in the bank, growing. If you start saving 15 percent of your income in your twenties, you will be a […]

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Deciding how long you should keep your old tax documents and financial records is hard enough without getting bogged down in busy work. It’s entirely possible these days to scan and create a digital record of every single piece of paper you accumulate. But you’ll never find me doing it. That may sound weird after […]

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I have been reviewing how I organize and store financial records I accumulate in my twin roles as human being and freelancer. Both David Bach, author of the Finish Rich series and David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, promote systems for filing away paper in such a way that you can actually find it […]

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Personal finance for freelancers is a tricky topic for many reasons, perhaps the most obvious of which is that our work lives—and the erratic payments that often go along with it—look a lot different than most people’s. Saving for retirement is a must for anyone who doesn’t want to spend their golden years panicked about […]

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