Comments on: How to Go Freelance, and Still Afford to Travel

By: Kelly O'Mara@facebook

Kelly O'Mara@facebook — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 21:06:15 +0000

I started freelancing and became the opposite of a penny-pincher. All of a sudden my efforts were actually tied to how much I was making, instead of making the same amount no matter how hard I worked. So, I started making way more and then I started feeling like I didn’t need to scrimp and I could buy what I wanted when I wanted because I had clearly worked for it. And, I could go where I wanted when I wanted, because no one cared.

Of course, I also have panic attacks that the money’s all going to drive up, so maybe eventually I’ll decide to spend some of that on counseling. Or, I’ll just buy something to make myself feel better.

By: mishaps

mishaps — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 17:03:32 +0000

@shoot I don’t think anyone was saying it’s horribly difficult at all.

By: shoot

shoot — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 16:41:17 +0000

@mishaps I think freelancers (at least American ones I know) are split about remembering to factor in taxes. I have several good friends who have been doing it for more than a decade, so they’re quite seasoned and know a lot of the tax loopholes on top of knowing what they actually need to make each month or quarter. But I know others who, for a variety of reasons, just can’t manage the financial side. I like to say that suck at that stuff, but you know what? I got better at it because it gave me a crazy amount of freedom. I’m not trying to say that someone can just get over not being able to add, but if it’s important enough to you, I think you can sometimes find ways around it. I get help with my taxes and financial management, on top of being my own bill collector and expense report filer. I can pay for the help by making more money. So…I dunno. I kind of think it’s a myth that this stuff has to be horribly difficult, but maybe I just feel that way because I bought into it for a long time. Once I changed my mindset, my income skyrocketed.

[ducks and runs for cover after expressing unpopular opinion]

By: mishaps

mishaps — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 16:20:46 +0000

@jfruh The way I learned that trick, years ago, was figure out the annual salary you need, double it, and then divide by 50, because of all the Federal and local holidays and whatnot. This protects you if you’re not working for months at a time. Of course, I am not a freelance writer, but a freelance office-worker, so your mileage may vary.

If you are getting paid by your time, and not by the piece, and there’s work available in your field, I think it’s more realistic to try to figure out what you need to charge if you’re assuming you’re working more than half, but less than all of the year – my current freelance rate works out to needing to work about 2/3 of the year. Which should theoretically leave a lot of time to travel, if I can get past my neuroses to do it!

I’m also currently putting all of my freelance expenses onto a mileage card, because I am both lazy and cheap.

By: shoot

shoot — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 16:09:32 +0000

@jfruh As a fellow freelancer, I totally agree with all of this. I have several trips scheduled over the next few months, and all will involve at least a little work while I’m there. But many are trips I booked and then sold related travel stories, so not only do I have to pound the pavement for at least a few hours in whatever destination I’ll be visiting and writing about; I get to write off part of the trip on my taxes!

I have a monthly income goal, and I work really hard to hit it, even though it seemed like a crazy number when I set it at the beginning of the year. I have to hustle harder than my friends with desk jobs — if it’s the 20th and I’m down $2k more than I’d like, I work hard to make that money show up over the next 10 days — but I love the challenge and especially like the freedom to, as you say, not worry about accrued vacation days if I want to take off early on Friday or sleep in during the week.

By: jfruh

jfruh — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:31:31 +0000

On a practical level, while paid vacation time is nice, it’s incredibly freeing to not have to store up vacation time and then coordinate your time off with your co-workers. It’s also worth mentioning (though I know this will make some recoil in horror) that, with Wi-Fi everywhere, you can bring your laptop along with you and fit in a few hours of work here and there in your downtime, which means you aren’t totally losing money every day you’re away.

Generally speaking, when you’re figuring out what your freelance rates should be (and you should do this as an aspirational exercize, even if at the moment you can’t command those rates), figure out your ideal annual salary, then divide that by 52 minus the number of weeks you’d like to take vacations, then divide that by your working week. So if you’re the type who wants four vacation weeks a year, divide that annual salary by 48, not 52!

By: navigateher

navigateher — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:53:18 +0000

All of this seems very familiar and true also for those not going freelance, but those having kids. Nothing like losing your income AND increased expenses (did you know strollers can cost you €1000? I didn’t.) And it really is liberating to notice that you don’t actually need to buy all that stuff you thought you needed, like new boots in two colours every fall, a new phone every 18 months, and all the nice looking stuff for your home that your friends got. It’s really ok not to have the perfect everything once you let go. It also makes me very excited to know that we’ve learned to live on very little money, so once I go back to work and we’ll have two incomes again, a lot of debt will get paid off AND we’ll be able to save money.

By: madrassoup

madrassoup — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:50:26 +0000

There is kind of a disconnect between the intro to the post and the tips that follow. The tips are all great, but I found them to be more philosophical than practical — at least when compared to what I was expecting, which was more like “I ate here, stayed there, did this” during your month in San Francisco.