Self-employment

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Monday, December 30. 2013

As someone who worked for a firm for many years, I have been self-employed for a while. The costs of self-employment are high:

- office space, maintenance, and insurances, including buying your own Disability
- work insecurity, erratic income, and no unemployment
- no paid vacations
- no splitting Social Sec and Medicare taxes with an employer - I pay 100% of it
- I find my own medical insurance and pay 100% of it
- Nobody contributes to my IRA except me
- no collegiality

With all that, it's understandable that most people prefer being employees. So what's the benefit?

Freedom. But freedom takes guts.

Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 14:47 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

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Congratulations. I believe there is a tipping point of efficiency in most service-oriented firms. I worked in a smallish asset management firm for many years then moved to one of the mega firms some years later. In my first few months at the mega firm, I estimated that about 40% of my day was spent reading and filing emails and internal presentations that had nothing remotely to do with my work. I think that if you don't know the names of every single person in the organization, then it is probably too big.

#1 DMW on 2013-12-30 15:40 (Reply)

I owned a small business some years ago, bought a failing situation and turned it around. Among the things that helped was opening the books up to my 7-8 employees. I showed them exactly where the money came from and where it went.

Every quarter I showed them the quarterly totals. Any time we made an operating profit two quarters in a row I split 33% of the first of those two quarter's profit among them as bonuses. It didn't take long for them to become mini-entrepreneurs on their own. They worked harder, longer, better.

#2 JorgXMcKie on 2013-12-30 18:38 (Reply)

1) Independence.
2) When I'm between projects, I don't have to sit in an office somewhere and look busy. I can work on my own stuff.
3) Independence.
4) My success - or failure - is based only on me, my efforts, my ability.
5) Independence.

Did I mention independence?

#3 Animal (Link) on 2013-12-30 18:38 (Reply)

Been self-employed for 25 years now, although I refer to it as "semi-retired", much to my wife's chagrin!

The freedom and independence has been invigorating and an amazing boone to family life: during one of my best earning years, I still had the opportunity to watch my son play every game of his senior year as captain of his high school soccer team. His team unexpectedly won their league championshipship and made it all the way to the state quarterfinals, losing on penalty kicks. I wouldn't have traded an hour of all of that for mere dollars more, grinding away on some project under a boss's nose.

As they say, nobody on his deathbed ever wished he'd spent more time in the office!

#3.1 Earl T on 2013-12-31 00:12 (Reply)

Closed my business on Halloween after 14 years. A solo medical practice. I built it. It was always hard work, what with all the hassles of medical practice these days, but I was my own boss and I could do things the way I thought they should be done. We did great work and gave great service at a great price (half the cost of the local hospital). But things really began to change in 2009. Right out of the gate, the new president and his party did all they could to make such a practice more and more difficult. I finally gave up as the Obamacare launch made it clear what chaos was coming. In a different field I would almost consider staring another business, I guess. But not until the Democrats are out of power. They have real problems with independence. And manhood, for that matter.

#4 Khornet on 2013-12-30 19:01 (Reply)

Zero days unemployment compensation is a good motivator to find work.

#5 forest on 2013-12-30 20:10 (Reply)

You don't pay more SS than the employed. They pay both havles too, but don't know it.

The only break they get is that the employer's half doesn't get taxed as their income, but the self employment tax form gives you that break back as well.

I always preferred working as an independent contractor from home. No office expenses either. Use the living room.

Stuff only gets tricky if you try to deduct stuff. Just let it go.

#6 rhhardin (Link) on 2013-12-31 05:52 (Reply)

Another advantage to being self-employed is that you don't have to take orders or try to implement plans that are doomed to fail from the incompetent nitwits above you, or have to deal with the obnoxious, ignorant, arrogant, stupid people in the office around you.

#7 feeblemind on 2013-12-31 13:38 (Reply)

Won't even mention the benefits of "under the table" and off grid work.

#8 Front toward Enemy on 2013-12-31 14:54 (Reply)

You are factually incorrect on a couple of points:

You ALWAYS paid all of your FICA taxes... half were visible and on your W-2 the other half was paid by you -- and hidden 'above the line' -- not deemed part of your taxable income.

But you DID earn it. EVERY cost allocation subroutine built into all the popular business expense software places those expenditures (by the firm) right back down onto the specific cost of hiring you, you, and nobody else.

So, whereas you're told that you earned $XXXXXX... the employer calculates your cost of labor as $XXXXXX + all of the direct associated taxes.

Congress, by such tricks, is spending your income before you even recognize that you've earned it.

0-care is this gambit on steroids -- with a meth injection.

Consequently, proffered wages are being rolled backwards, all across the blue collar sector. In construction, this is best done by laying off the old hands at the end of a given build -- then hiring fresh talent at the new wage point. Suddenly, 0-care is affordable to the firms.

#9 blert on 2014-01-02 04:00 (Reply)

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Monday, December 30. 2013

Self-employment