From a 9-to-5 job to full-time freelancing? Awesome!
Making your own time to setting up your charges, freelancing has lots of benefits and plus points.
But what many new freelancers don’t know is it can be costly as well. After all, you are starting your own business and additionally you are moving on from steady and precise paychecks to variable and sometimes in the starting, nonexistent income.
So before jumping into full-time freelancing, take this financial checkup to make sure you are ready to begin.
1. Check your start up expenses.
Freelancing is pretty cheap. One does not have to rent a huge office building, buy software systems and even hire employees, but that does not mean that freelancing won’t cost you.
If you want to land great clients and earn good money from freelancing, you have got to invest in your start up. Before starting full time freelancing, go through the startup costs. It can be easy to pay that amount from the current steady paycheck you are getting before starting full time freelancing.
Some common start-up expenses are:
Website hosting
Website design
Marketing expenses
Membership for online services and other professional organization
Tools and equipments
It would be great to plan for freelancing and step into it. It will be great if one would be able to cover these start-up expenses with the current paycheck. If not hold on, save time and money for these basic start up expenses.
2.Budgeting Skills
Money management is extremely important while freelancing and that too for new full-time freelancers, it is very difficult to deal with for the first few months or weeks. Assuming that at the current moment, you are used to regular precise paychecks, but as you land into full-time freelancing, the income becomes highly variable and sometimes nonexistent. So say a goodbye to that consistent income if you are beginning freelancing.
That’s why you need to check your routine expenses and ask yourself if you can manage on a fairly low income on your own costs. See where you can cut out on your expenses. Make sure to prioritize your spending and expenses. Money management is required on a high note if you are planning to enter full time freelancing.
3. Backup Plan
Everyone thinks freelancing is easy and they can reach to 6 figure mark income within months of beginning but that happens rarely. Reality is most freelancers have to work hard for months and sometime for few years to be able to get a fairly decent income. It is completely normal and you should expect this coming. So don't forget about your resume it may still be useful, if you don't have resume, assistance is at hand and online resume editing services can solve your problem.
So before stepping into full-time freelancing, it is a safe and smart idea to form some sort of backup plan. This backup plan is something that will pay you, something like a part-time job or side hustle so you can play for your basic needs even if your start-up is not giving you enough. It is not necessary to get a complete 6 months financial backup for a safe transition, but some sort of financial backup plan is necessary if your freelancing backfires just in-case.
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