Budget 101 for freelancers is to think and remember you are running a business effectively, and always consider the two - personal and business cash flows separate. Pay yourself a monthly salary that pays all bills plus a little luxury plus allows a small amount to be banked and saved each month, with the end aim of a personal rainy day fund that equals 18 months of that current salary level as a minimum. For the business - don't turn work down - if need be pass work onto colleagues friends and trusted third parties - always say yes you will help your clients even if not personally doing the work. Retain a healthy amount of cash in the company to weather drier times, unforeseen bills to the company, and potential future growth (where you hire additional resources top help achieve more and bigger projects).
HN user
propstratsux
I think the hack of sending out a physical item with free digital download is a great way to bypass this ridiculous EU garbage. A colleague who has some paid for digital content just started to do this last week and the customers seem quite happy about it.
Basically, if you work for a desk, you will be ok - you are working on interesting short term and long term deliverables that have very visible effect on PnL, and your bonus will come from the desk pot. Now, if you work for IT, then you are way down in the pecking order. You work for a cost centre. With brain dead management that will introduce paperwork process and shit to make life he'll. Deliveries to the business will be slow and painful. They will hate you. You will get tiny bonuses. If you work at JP or Boa or GS you will most likely work on their proprietary platform like Athena, Quartz or SecDB. They suck and blow at the same time. Offshore colleagues will deliver the worst code that fails all testing and you will be stuck fixing (rewriting) you colleagues work. Salaries will sound good, until you consider the long hours and do the math and realise your hourly rate is approaching that of working in Pizza Express.