As a newly self-employed person, you’ll almost certainly feel compelled to take on every piece of work that presents itself, because you’ll think that for some reason your supply of work might dry up next month. Finding yourself with nothing to do would be bad, but it’s almost certainly not going to happen. Finding yourself with everything to do, because you were afraid to say “no,” can be much worse.
More than just great advice on financial buffers, this paragraph from Malarkey’s latest blog post sums up freelance work in a nutshell.
Go to The importance of building a financial buffer
No, not another meme. It took my wife to remind me that last weekend marked four years as a freelancer. Four years under the name Hicksdesign. I can’t believe its that long, it feels like only yesterday that I took that leap.
Its been wonderful, and I don’t think I could go back to work for someone else, but why didn’t anyone tell me:
- You would be working A LOT. More than you thought.
- That dealing with emails, quotes and enquiries would be more time-consuming than doing the accounts
- That you have to keep a photocopy of each VAT return – not just a printout from your accounting software, but of the actual return. Whoops.
- That strange distant mumbling is the sound of you talking to yourself.
- That in the first couple of months I would be so nervous and lacking in confidence that I would be sick.
Never mind, I soon found out.
I have to say, that I would never have gone freelance, or have survived so long, if it wasn’t for an encouraging, understanding and completely supportive wife. I tried hard to make that last sentence not sound trite, or like some embarrassing acceptance speech, but its the truth.
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