July 11, 2017
Weekly Newsletter for Freelancers
How Much Does Money Matter to You as a Freelancer?
A critical issue for many freelancers is making a lot of money, but is that your main goal in life?
Our society has fostered the belief that making a lot of money is the most important goal that you can have. However, when you are a grandparent or an older single person, many people’s perspective on life changes because you realize that life is short and pursuing monetary goals can deny satisfaction in life in many other areas. The baby boomers that arrive at retirement with their bucket list before they rapidly come to this realization, provided they are relatively comfortably off.
I am sure you know that Bill and Melinda Gates now have decided to give a lot of their money away. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s motto is “We are impatient optimists working to reduce inequity”. You can read about the Foundation’s work here. None of us will even dream of being in this situation, but the point is, accumulating money is not the main goal in life for most of us. That is why we went freelancing, right?
Tyra Seldon has written an article about this issue for the Freelancers Union Blog entitled Let’s Talk about the “M” Word. You can read Tyra’s article here.
Motivate Yourself!
“Everyone has highs and lows that they have to learn from, but every morning I start off with a good head on my shoulders, saying to myself, ‘It’s going to be a good day!”– Lindsay Lohan
If Your Employer Makes You Redundant and You Can’t Get A Job, How Do You Start Again?
One of the toughest things in your life can be being made redundant by an employer. This is especially true if you have a young family and a very high mortgage that you are struggling to pay off.
Yesterday I was visiting friends in another part of Melbourne, Australia, where I had never been before. Here new suburbs were being created. The homes were very expensive and I imagined that many of the owners would have debts in excess of $500,000. Typically, both parents would need to work to be able to afford to pay off the mortgage.
We have not had a recession in Australia for more than 25 years. Many people of working age do not know what it is like to have widespread redundancies like happened in the US and UK during and post-GFC. It takes a lot of will power to pick yourself up and get yourself organized to earn an income from home.
At the same time as I was thinking about this article, John Williams, the chairperson of the United States Federal Reserve, was issuing warnings about Australian housing debt. He said, “Australian Housing Flashing Red”. You can read his article and my comment here.
John Williams’s comments made me think about motivation and freelancing so I searched out an article from 2008 and I found this: If redundancy strikes, here’s how to work from home. It was written by Nina Montagu-Smith for the Telegraph. You can read it here.
Productivity Tip Of The Week
Should You Outsource or Hire Locally?
Imagine you have won a gig that has various specialist skills involved that you don’t have. Overall you are responsible so it is an outsourcing dilemma. This often requires you to decide whether you outsource locally or from overseas.
This can be a tricky decision because often it means that you will be letting go of control and direct interaction with the freelancer you outsource to
overseas. It is not that you can pop around to see the graphic designer and discuss your design over a cup of coffee. Some people like doing that because it feels they have more control over the project with eye to eye contact.
However, the trade off can be a decrease in profit because generally a developed country’s freelancers require a higher hourly rate. From a bottom line perspective, it results in decreased profits, so if you like productivity it is a trade-off decision.
Freelancer.Com has recognized this situation and introduced a service called Local Jobs. Jieneb Kho from the Freelancer.Com Community has written an article called Local Jobs: How to Hire a Freelancer near You. You can read Jieneb’s article here.
Work-Life Balance Tip Of The Week
Grandparents and Work Life Balance for Freelancers.
You may not have realized yet, but I am a senior freelancer who is a grandparent. My wife and I are in a bike riding club and most of us are seniors and many are grandparents. We have a standing joke that when some of our friends are unable to ride unexpectedly, we suspect that they may have been called away on “GERT” duties. This stands for Grandparents’ Emergency Response Team!
For freelancers with children, having GERT members on call is very valuable for work life balance reasons. The GERT members are quite often called on to help relieve work life balance pressures.
If you are a freelancer with children you will know just how important this can be for when you have an important gig to complete and there are parents’ duties clashing with the deadlines.
Richard Eisenberg has written an article entitled Grandmothers Caring for Grandkids: Work-Life Balance for Forbes magazine. You can read Richard’s article here
Financial Tip Of The Week
Do Freelancers Need Disability Insurance?
Let me say at the outset in this article, that this is not insurance advice because I do not have your personal details. It is an informative article for freelancers. There, the compliance a bit is covered!
Do you know anyone that has claimed on disability insurance? I do, it was myself, when I was involved in a nasty bullying incident at work and was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. PTSD can be tough. It can be tough because you never stop thinking about it and it never goes away. Soldiers returning from combat often suffer from PTSD years later, even the top Special Forces members. It is real. I know!
When I was a certified financial planner, after
recovery and retraining from the banking disaster zone, I had clients that claimed on disability insurance and it saved their families from financial disaster. One was a policeman and one was an engineer. These are two that readily come to mind.
The relevance to this article is that you can never tell how vulnerable you are. This is especially true if you have a family that is wholly or partly dependent on you to pay the bills.
There are people who say that disability insurance is a waste of money. Let me assure you that it isn’t. The Freelancers Union has recognized this and has started scheming to look after its members. You can read about it here.
Allena Tapia has written an article for The Balance Blog entitled Do Freelancers need disability insurance? You can read her article here.
Freelancers And Cyber Security
We have gained approval from Robert Siciliano to bring you extracts from his books related to cyber security for freelancers. Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert and consultant. He also gives self defense and personal safety seminars. Robert provides safety and identity theft fraud prevention tips and advice on multimedia channels in the United States. We have his approval to bring you weekly extracts from his books:
