Freelance Finance

The phrase “keep your nose to the grindstone” took on new meaning for me Friday, when Mire and I attended a woodworking class given by master craftsman, author, and self-employed worker Andy Rae. Though the class was about sharpening woodworking tools, I couldn’t help finding a double meaning in much of what Rae said.
I […]

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Are you outraged about the price of mobile phones? You should be. If you go over your allotted minutes, your carrier hits you with fees. If you stay substantially under your allotment, you’re wasting money. Yes, yes, I know some carriers offer carryover. But if you haven’t used those extra minutes this month, what makes […]

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How to save money fast…10 ways to get out of debt now…How to become a millionaire….and so on and so forth and blah, blah, ad nauseum, BLAH. With all of this free information available about personal finance, you’d think that Americans would be walking around in stellar financial shape. But alas, mon frere, you would […]

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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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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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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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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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Paying yourself first is the cardinal rule of all income-earners, whether you are a self-employed freelancer or not. As you may have noticed, Mire and I like to call this feeding the monkey. Suppose you decide to save 15 percent of your income. Save it as follows: 10 percent to a retirement account, and 5 […]

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