What I’m Doing to Prepare for Self-Employment

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What I'm Doing to Prepare for Self-EmploymentA couple of months ago, I published a post on Making Sense of Cents about How To Prepare for Self-Employment. I am planning on making the switch relatively soon, and I wanted to publish an update to that post.

There are many things that I have done and that I need to do in order to make the switch to self-employment as smooth as possible:

Increase our savings

We are really working on increasing our emergency fund. We depleted a lot of it in order to pay off my student loans. We want to have around one full year of expenses before I make the freelancing switch.

Luckily our budget is kind of low. Everything altogether (but before saving for retirement) is around $3,000 each month.

Think of a backup plan

Self-employment and freelancing is a dream of mine, and I would really prefer it to never end. However, we have to be realistic. What if something medical came up? What if freelancing really went down hill and we use up all of our emergency fund?

I really want to keep my resume up-to-date as much as I can. I want to keep my skills up-to-date as well. I really do have high hopes for my freelancing, and I am hoping that I will be successful with it for years to come.

Build my freelance services

Yes, I said empire, mainly just to be funny!  I am working on increasing the number of services that I offer, and I am also working on increasing the amount of clients that I have. Yes, I will be tired up until the day that I make the switch, but it will all be worth it.

I have been much better with streamlining my tasks and making everything work. Working my day job and freelancing have been much better lately.

Health insurance

Health insurance is tricky. Until W and I get married, I’m just going to have to suck it up and pay the high cost for health insurance. I am still undecided if I should pay for a cheaper plan that is mainly for “catastrophic” medical cases, or if I should get a more expensive plan.

I am healthy and hardly ever go to the doctor, but you never know what may happen.

Various expenses

There are a lot of relatively little things that I need to plan as well. I would like to set up a home office so that I am not just working anywhere and everywhere in the house. I would like to be more organized and have a place that I can really concentrate.

Right now, my various offices are on the couch in front of a TV…

Taxes

Taxes have of course been thought about and have been paid so far. I’m still looking into various ways to be smart with taxes and I will be consulting with more accountants soon. Paying 30% to 40% in taxes makes me cringe, but it has to be done.

It will be harder to get approved for financing

This is something that everyone keeps telling us. Yes, I know! We are putting our home-buying on hold since we haven’t found anything that we like yet.

What else should someone do who is preparing for self-employment?

 

Spend your money smartly – How can you stay away from debt problems?

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Do you spend money within your means? Most people don’t and this is the reason why debt problems are increasing so much these days.

When you spend money in excess, you won’t be able to keep a track of where your money is going out. There are suitable debt solutions such as consolidation and settlement that helps you get rid of debt soon. You can get information about the solutions for your debt problems from the different financial websites. Since all debt solutions will not suit you, you will have to find out which is best for your situation. By reducing some expenses, you may be able to bring finances under your control and not fall into debt.

4 Ways to keep control on your money and do not incur debt

Read on to know the 4 ways how you can keep control on your money flow so that you do not incur debt.

Spend only on your necessities for the time-being

Are you facing financial problems? If yes, then you should purchase only the necessary items for now till your personal finances improve to some extent. As such, you may have to part with your luxuries for sometime. Thus, when you’ll spend only on the necessities, you may not get entrapped into debt. However, if you’ve spend a lot of money earlier due to which you have fallen into debt, then try to repay them soon so as to become completely free from debt.

Budget is what you need to spend money efficiently

Have you drafted a suitable budget for yourself? With the help of a budget, you will be able to understand how much you can spend from your monthly income. If you do not stick to your budget, then you may incur debt problems unnecessarily. As such, see that you follow the budget you’ve made so that you can spend money accordingly and also stay away from debt worries.

Another way to budget is to get a scotlandstrustdeed.co.uk in order to pay off your debt.

Use cash when buying the essential items

Do you have the habit of swiping credit cards for buying your necessities? If yes, then you should pay off the outstanding balance on time. When you don’t repay the balance, you may fall into unnecessary debt. Thus, instead of using your credit cards every time, why don’t you purchase the necessary items with hard cash? By doing so, you may not pile up debts needlessly.

Savings is a necessity to have a secured future

How much have you saved till date? You would have hardly paid any heed to it unless you found you’ve mounted up huge debt that you need to repay. If you have some good savings, why don’t you use them now to eradicate the debts? Make sure you do not use all your savings towards eliminating the debts. You must keep some money in the savings fund so that you can have a financially secured future.

Handling your personal finance smartly is essential if you want to stay financially secured. Thus, you should consider the above-discussed ways so that you may not incur debt problems in the future.

Life After I Quit

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Life After I quitA couple of weeks ago, I talked about all of the positives of working from home. I honestly cannot wait, and I think about my self-employment switch date all the time.

Even though I think about my switch date all the time, and I’m very excited, I do know that working for yourself is hard work. It will not be wonderful every single day, but I do think it will be much better than working for someone else in a job that I do not enjoy at all.

I will have more time to enjoy life.

Since I will be able to make my own schedule, I will have more time to enjoy life. Life won’t only exist on the weekend. I can go for a bike ride in the middle of the day on a Tuesday if I wanted to.

I will have more time to spend with family. For so long I have been working a long, or working and going to school at the same time. I will have more time to see W and everyone else that I care about. I can see my friends more also instead of just every once in a while.

No more stress from my stressful job.

Most of you know exactly what I do, but to keep it short, I am a financial analyst/investment banker. Not exactly the most fun job on earth. I deal with lawyers, taxes, and most of my clients have millions upon millions in the bank, along with $50 million houses. I get to see 5 year olds who have a net worth of 500 or 1,000 times what I have. It’s all very depressing, haha!

I won’t have to worry about going to court, talking to lawyers every day, and messing with numbers that I don’t care about. I won’t have to read and analyze legal agreements and financial statements all day either.

More time to travel.

A big positive of freelancing and blogging is that I can work from wherever I want to work. I can travel to everywhere that I want to travel, without being bound by how many vacation days that I have left.

I do have to think about the dogs and our house, and would need someone reliable to help out since my sister works and goes to school, and because she is also thinking about moving to Chicago. I could never get rid of my dogs, so we would need a reliable house and dog sitter for whenever we go on a trip.

More time to grow my business.

Right now I work around 50 hours a week at my day job, with around 10 hours a week of commuting and getting ready related to it. I will get to take these 60 hours per week and devote it to improving my freelancing, expanding and enjoying life.

Yes, I will most likely just work more in my freelancing, nut it will be stuff that I enjoy instead of forcing myself out of bed every day.

Time to volunteer.

Even though I have limited time right now, I should be volunteering. I feel bad that I use my lack-of-time reasoning as an excuse to not volunteer and help others.

I would like to volunteer somewhere like being a Big Sister, or something animal related. I’ve also thought about helping children who have been in the same spot as me, such as helping kids who have found out that their parents or a close loved one has cancer. Or maybe just volunteering with the American Cancer Society directly.

What is your dream job? Do you think you have a good work-life balance?