Freelancing: Diversifying your income streams

Have you ever been a freelancer or an independent contractor--with only one client?

Before I started freelance writing, a friend told me that more than half of his freelance income came from the same client, for whom he published a magazine twice a year. These long projects, 3 months each, allowed him to make it as a freelancer. Throughout the rest of the year, he cobbled together what work he could find.

I was alarmed. What if he lost that client? It didn't sound like he had enough other clients to get him through.

Now I am a freelancer and I have exactly one client.

I should look for other clients, build my portfolio, meet other editors, and generally cover my ass a little better. Why haven't I done this?

The main reason is that I don't have time. The one client I have only provides very occasional work, but it's still all the work I have time for. I'm not a full-time freelancer. I have a part-time job that gives me some regular income and benefits. I also have a couple of volunteer jobs that take up a lot of time (don't ever let yourself be flattered into joining a board of directors), and then there's the kid.

Still, the client I have recently informed me that they're discontinuing the column I've been writing for. There may be some other work on another project, but it's very iffy and is probably a one-shot deal. Now, while my published clips are still fresh, is the perfect time for me to try to get some other work.

But this is what I'm so bad at. Coming up with an idea is easy. Even thinking of a publication that might buy it. But writing a query letter and sending it out? I think I'll do that next week.

Sigh. Procrastination is my tragic flaw.

Hopefully I'll get around to looking for other clients soon. I could do it right this minute, but I'd rather go scrub the grout in my shower with a toothbrush.

Quick! Donate!

The new year is less than 48 hours away, so I'm using some Christmas gift money to write a few last-minute checks to my favorite non-profit organizations. I'll be happy I did when tax time rolls around.

We're sticking loosely to our giving plan, with a few other groups thrown in that have inspired us lately.

How to spend $200K in 10 days

That's what it cost when I went to the emergency room, spent a total of 6 days in intensive care, had two surgeries and a couple blood transfusions. Of course, I have no idea what my insurance company actually paid, but the total amount billed was $196,366. As far as I can tell, though, this doesn't include any of the doctors' fees. This amount was just for the services rendered by the hospital.

Luckily I was able to read the bill without raising my heart rate because the amount due said only $240, the co-pay my insurance company requires for a hospital stay.

A few interesting line-items:

Room and board (four days in a surgical ward): $13,804
Room and board (six days in intensive care): $40,076
Pharmacy (10 days worth of meds): $11,824
Anesthesia (1 minor surgery, 1 major surgery): $6000
Blood (2 separate transfusions, 4 units total): $4794
OR services (maybe this was the doctor's bills?): $25,439
CAT Scans X2: $8400
Arteriograph (what's this?): $16,368
Emergency room (a bargain, I was there for six hours): $1099


Our health care system is so wacky. I'm sure my insurance didn't pay them $196K. I wish I could see what they did pay.

I've been thinking lately about how cancer changes the actuarial tables and increases the health insurance premiums at whatever employer you get insurance from. I'm glad I don't work for a small non-profit that I care about, because I would feel bad about driving everybody's health insurance costs up. As an oncology patient, it's not like I need something else to feel bad about.

But I get my COBRA insurance coverage through my former employer. It's a big place, so one person having cancer will have less impact on their risk pool. And besides, I hated it there. They treat their employees like sh**, and I'm sure the stress and the crappy working conditions I experienced while working there did not help my body fight off this cancer recurrence. Of course it's not their fault my cancer came back, but if somebody's costs have to go up because I've got cancer while I'm on their health plan, I'm glad it's those f***ers.

PS. I might sound grumpy about this whole cancer thing, but everything's actually going very well. I'm quite active, feeling pretty normal, and my natural optimism (tempered with a bad potty mouth and a large dose of cynicism) is seeing me through.

We're buying a depreciating asset, I mean a car

When we set out on Xmas Eve to drive 100 miles to spend Christmas with family, we got about 2 miles from our house when our 14-year-old car started behaving strangely. The steering wheel was pulling rapidly from left to right, shaking violently, and generally acting like it was going to start making its own decisoins about which direction the car should go. After much fretting and tinkering, we ended up taking the car on the trip anyway without any serious mishaps, but we used our time on the road to talk about whether we should think about replacing our car.

The car has been pretty reliable in the 3.5 years since we bought it. Our mechanic is a master at keeping old cars alive without putting a lot of money into them. But we'd rather buy a car while this one is still running. The last time we bought a car, we didn't have a car at all, and it was difficult taking public transport all over the Philadelphia metro area with a tiny baby in the winter to test drive cars. Also, we had to buy one of the first cars we looked at because it was such a pain shopping for one.

In addition, my mother is moving to town in about a month and will need a car to drive for a while until she can afford to buy one. We have thought about giving her our current car to help with her transition. When I implied that this might be an option, though, she said, "well, I need something really reliable, though." I confess I was a little insulted. If she doesn't want a free car then I'll just sell it and pocket the money, thank you very much. And my car is perfectly reliable, if you don't mind having towed occasionally.

So, if you live within 50 miles of Philadelphia, and have a Japanese 4-door sedan that's 5-7 years old and gets really fabulous gas mileage, will you please sell it to me for just a hair under blue book value? Thanks. I really appreciate it.

Interesting reads

Some recent good reads from the PF blogosphere:

Madame X asks, What's your walk score?, and sends us to this sitewhere you can find out how walkable your neighborhood is. My house scored a 62 out of a possible 100, but I found there were a lot of restaurants and shops missing from the list. There is an up-and-coming retail strip half a mile from my house, and many of its stores were left out of the list.

MSN Money and NY Times columnist M.P. Dunleavey defends her recent decision to buy a more expensive home. Readers and PF bloggers have been criticising her decision ever since she first discussed it in her NYT column. I would just like the record to reflect that I am not as ditzy as MP (close, but not quite), and if anybody wants to pay me cold hard cash to write a column every week, I promise to spend it more wisely than MP does.

Boston Gal debates the advantages of paying off her mortgage early versus investing the extra money.

Make Love, Not Debt has an interesting discussion of how they manage to sleep at night with a large debt load. Their not-very-recently-updated net worth shows an amazing amount of progress. They're now only $47K in the red, although I still think the $25K value they assign to "personal possessions" is a bit ludicrous. If you've ever held a garage sale, you know how much a guy on the street is willing to pay for your gently used crap.

Queercents recently scored a guest post from sexpert Susie Bright, who wrote about Suze Orman's sexuality and how it influences the financial advice she gives women. My favorite quote is when Suze not only comes out as a lesbian, but informs all curious viewers that she's never had sex with a man. Also, Suze is pissed about the advantage married people have over us unmarrieds in matters of inheritance. The difference between me and Suze is that her partner will pay millions in inheritance taxes when Suze kicks the bucket. My partner will only pay hundreds of thousands when I kick it. Oh, and my partner has a penis.

Christmas needs to come NOW

This is the most dangerous time of the holiday season for me.

I finished my Xmas shopping a couple of weeks ago. I don't enjoy shopping, and I despise rushed, last-minute, high-pressure shopping. So I start shopping around Halloween and by early December, I'm pretty much done.

Then I think of MORE gifts, and MORE and MORE. I usually manage to control myself, but at the very last minute, I kind of lose my self control and start shopping again.

For the last week, every time I leave the house, I find myself coming home with more things. At the moment my weakness is stocking stuffers for my son.

I went to CVS for something else, and came home with a chocolate santa and some spiderman stickers.

I went to the food co-op, and came home with little red socks with penguins on them.

I went to the bank, and passed the art supply store and somehow I found myself going in and buying scented markers like I had when I was a kid.


If the 25th doesn't hurry up and get here, I'm going to need a bucket-sized stocking to hold all the little gifts I've got for the kid.

Freelancing: Office space is crucial

Normally, I work on my laptop at our dining room table. But there are some types of work that it's hard to do with kids and chatty relatives in the room.

I've got a deadline this week that's totally manageable, but I need the time and the space to get the work done. Yesterday I spent most of the day shut up in my bedroom, partly procrastinating and partly working, sitting cross-legged on my bed. My partner's mother came this week to help us, so she and the kid were downstairs the whole day, playing together while I hid upstairs and my partner was at his office in Center City.

Today, I couldn't bear the thought of working on my bed all day again. I got up and showered and walked over to the local cafe, which gets louder all the time. I have run into two people I know, both of whom wanted to talk at length. They're playing some kind of dancey electronic music in here that reminds me of my college days, and of the months I spent being a wallflower in college bars because I was a DJ's girlfriend, even though I didn't drink and wouldn't dance in front of anybody. Not a good memory.

I want to be home with my cup of tea. If only the kid's preschool didn't have such a long winter break. If only I had my own office at home. If only I'd finished this project last night instead of getting sucked into the newest issue of Poets and Writers Magazine.

If only I wasn't procrastinating right this very minute.

Tis the season

...for tension and bickering among families.

Between now and January 3rd, I have 3 rounds of houseguests coming. They don't overlap but they're separated by only one night each. Luckily, they're all the helpful and cheerful sort of houseguests. There's another relative coming to town, who is not that sort of houseguest, but she's staying in a hotel. The logistics are terrifying. Nobody calls each other to make plans. They all call me, and ask me to interpret the others' actions.

"Do you think she's getting me a gift? Do I have to get one for her?"

"Where is she staying?"

"When is she coming?"

"Is she going to be really put out if she has to drive that far?"

If it weren't for the fact that I will get to watch a small child open his new pirate ship, I would be wishing it was already next week.

Goodbye, big corporate bank

After 7 years, I have finally gotten around to kicking my big corporate bank to the curb.

My partner and I opened a checking account at a local neighborhood bank this week. There are some disadvantages. The bank opened very recently. There are only 2500 customers, and so far there is only one branch and one ATM. Still, they're growing fast, and they are opening a second branch next year.

But I think I'll enjoy the small-town feeling. While we were opening our account, the manager walked by and recognized me, because I was in there six months ago grilling her about their online interface. They let our recently potty-trained son use their bathroom, and the security guard told me all about her mother's recent illness. Their advertisements all have pictures of local small-business owners, many of whom I recognize.

I'm hoping we'll be with this bank for a long time, and that the bank will help the economic situation in our neighborhood while giving us good, personal, small-town service.

For that, I'm willing to put up with the inconvenience of having only one ATM at first.

Now, all I have to do is spend some time setting up online billpay and linking the account to my credit cards and my brokerage account.

Clumsy

Within the space of an hour today, I accomplished the following graceful maneuvers.

1. I tried to reply to an individual email, and accidentally replied to a listserv with 1300 subscribers. This same listserv recently had a spate of people emailing the whole list saying "please unsubscribe me", and I wrote a very helpful post explaining listserv commands, how to unsubscribe, how to reply to the whole list and how to reply to an individual. And now I've proved myself to be as idiotic as the other list members.

2. While refilling the small bottle of Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap that I keep in the shower, I poured a large quantity of soap onto the radiator and everything on top of the radiator, as well as the bathroom floor. Damn, but that stuff froths endlessly when you're trying to clean it up.

3. While reheating some soup, I dropped a glass jar of parmesan cheese on the kitchen floor. It did not break, but I managed to scatter half the jar across the floor before I was able to stop if from rolling.

Now we are four: Frugal birthdays for kids

We recently celebrated our son's fourth birthday, and he was very happy with his party and his presents. This year I did it all for under $100, and I thought I'd share how I pulled it off.

Have the party at home. I've heard the rule of thumb that you should invite a small number of kids--your child's age plus one is supposed to be an ideal number. But between my son's school friends, neighborhood friends, and non-school friends, we were quickly up to a dozen kids, especially since my son is still young enough that parents often stay for the party, bringing all the invited kid's siblings. As it was, I felt guilty because there were a few kids who had invited L to their birthday parties who got left out, and at least one friend of mine seemed hurt that I hadn't invited her daughter. So our house was quite full, but we made it work by having the party for a defined, and short, period of time. It was 10–12, and I'm happy to say most people were gone by 12:15.

Have the kids make their own party favors. We bought a bunch of poster board and some foam shapes with sticky backs at the dollar store, and my mom supervised the kids in making hats. Most kids were too busy playing with L's toys, but a few kids got really into the craft.

Serve snack, not lunch. Last year I served mac and cheese to the party guests, but we didn't have enough places for all the kids to sit down. This year, we ended the party before lunch, but we didn't want to deal with a dozen kids whose stomachs were empty except for cake. So we served carrot sticks and string cheese and grapes before the cake, which seemed to work pretty well. Our own kid was the only one who got so sugared up he was out of control.

Invite people over the phone. I didn't have it together to send out invitations in advance, and the phone worked better anyway because I got an instant RSVP.

Tell people gifts are optional. How does this save me money? Because it helps to create a culture among my friends that will allow me to buy fewer gifts for other people's kids. When I called to invite people to the party, I told the parents that they should only bring a gift if it was important to their kid. Some kids get so excited about buying and wrapping and bringing a gift to a birthday party. But some kids don't care. The gift L liked the best was a large stuffed hippo that his friend S. gave him, something she'd had for a long time but didn't play with. We also got at least one gift with the thrift store's price tag still on it.

Make, don't buy, the cake. This is easy for me to say, since my partner is the baker in the house. But the kids loved the chocolate cake with "banilla" icing that my son asked his papa to bake, and I bought a special #4 candle.

Find the best local dollar store. Instead of buying paper plates that would be thrown out at the end of the day, I bought a couple packages of plastic plates and cups that I can keep in the basement and trot out for birthday parties for the next few years. I also broke down and bought a package of tiny cars (for a dollar) that had enough to give each kid one, and some crepe paper streamers to decorate the house. Oh, and I confess, I went a bit overboard and bought baloons and dinosaur noisemakers. But going overboard at the dollar store is still cheap. For the craft materials, the party favors, the dishes and the decorations, I spent only $26.

Steer the grandparents toward specific gifts. Ever since the year my father threatened to buy our son a train table against our wishes (he already had a complete train set, and we live in a small row house) we've been very careful to send him a list. This year, we wanted to get our son the Playmobil airport set. So we asked Grandpa to get him the jet plane, and we bought him the control tower. My mom bought him another accessory, and a third accessory is his main Xmas gift. We also gave him a little set of child-sized pots, and he's been having a good time making pretend cakes for us.

So, a $50 party, including crafts, favors and food, and $50 spent on gifts. I'm pleased, my son was thrilled, and over a week later the house has almost recovered.

Incognito

A friend of mine has left the country for a month, and has left me her car and her house. I intend to use the house when I need a place to hide out. Also, she has a lot of puzzles. I love puzzles, but I am not so stupid as to do a puzzle at home where Someone Small would take great delight in "helping" me. And when I got frustrated and asked him not to "help" me any more, he would do something with the pieces like steal them by the handful to use as gravel for his excavator and dump truck, or hide them behind the couch, or put them in my water glass. Shudder.

So I have a hideout for the next month--a quiet house full of puzzles and good tea, less than a mile from my own house.

I also have a car, a cute little white Toyota, quite a bit newer than my Old Reliable. My friend left early this morning, and already we had a logistical snafu that would have taken much hair-pulling to resolve normally. Today it was easily solved because we are temporarily a two-car family. I needed to get downtown to a meeting, and needed to return a stack of library books on the way there and pick up some grocery staples on the way home. My partner, on the other hand, needed to transport two tired 4-year-olds through an icy downpour over a distance of almost 2 miles. No problem. We had two cars today.

And if the shocking number of bumper stickers on the back lead other motorists to believe that I am a militantly pacifist Jewish lesbian, so be it.

How to weather a medical emergency, Part 2

What's your most important financial tool to help you get through a medical crisis?

One word. Insurance.

I'm going to look at the different types of insurance, including the types that I have and the types I wish I had.

Health insurance. This one is a no brainer. If you don't have it, you need to get it immediately. If you've got a medical condition like I do, or a medical history that makes you look like a bad investment, the easiest way to get insured is to get a job that offers health coverage. You can also move to a state that guarrantees health insurance coverage for everyone, but your premiums will be through the roof. (See this book for more information.) If you need to buy your own insurance but can't afford your dream policy, look into catastrophic insurance, which has a very high deductible and usually only covers 80% of your medical bills after you meet the deductible. Still, it's better than nothing.

Disability insurance. In my recent medical debacle, I was lucky to have fantastic health insurance, so our biggest challenge is not medical bills but lost wages. I couldn't work while I was in the hospital, obviously, but neither could my spouse. He had to take several weeks off of work to care for our son. Disability insurance wouldn't have helped us replace his wages, but the real test is going to come later this winter if the docs succeed in talking me into doing chemotherapy. I'll be out of work for months, with only a tiny disability payout from my union to get me through. How I wish I had disability insurance....

Aflac insurance. Aflac is one of several insurance companies that offers policies to cover specific types of illness or injury. They have a policy that pays out if you're admitted to the hospital. They have a policy that pays out if you get diagnosed with cancer. Unlike other types of insurance, these guys have a set dollar figure that they'll pay you if you experience a medical event that's covered, and they send you a check for that amount. There is no submitting receipts or documenting your expenses. This idea appeals to me because there are so many hidden costs to illness and injury. Spouse taking time off work. Family member flying in from another state to help. Additional childcare that you have to pay for. The list of incidental expenses is very long, and Aflac policies are designed to cover the things that traditional health insurance won't cover.

Travel insurance. In August, we had planned a trip to the Midwest to see some family. But it turned out I was having exploratory surgery so we cancelled the trip. We now have over $1000 worth of unused plane tickets and we have to use the tickets within the next few months. Plus we have to pay a hefty change fee. So when I booked our plane tickets for Thanksgiving and Xmas, I thought, what the heck, I'll buy the travel insurance. The insurance for five different plane tickets cost about $75. If all of our claims are paid, we'll be getting about $2500, and there will be no pressure to use the tickets by a certain date or lose our money. I'm thinking I'm going to be a faithful purchaser of travel insurance from now on. Now, if I can only get my busy surgeon to sign all the appropriate forms.

Life insurance. Not to be pessimistic, but I do find it comforting that my partner and my kid would be just fine without me, at least financially. And I'm glad I bought life insurance four years ago, because with this recent cancer diagnosis I don't think I could find anybody to insure me.

Other types of insurance. You can get payment protection plans so you won't have to pay your credit cards if you have a qualifying crisis. This might make sense if you have a large balance. Otherwise, I'd say use the cost of the payment protection plan to pay your card down faster. Ditto for mortgage insurance, which seems like a very specialized life insurance policy to me. The policies I've looked at, anyway, seem to pay out if the insured person dies. My life insurance policy would pay off the mortgage, so I don't need special mortgage insurance.

Of course, a healthy emergency fund offers its own kind of insurance. But I'm assuming you all know about emergency funds so I won't beat that dead horse.

What about you? Has an insurance policy ever helped you through a tight spot?

Related posts:
How to weather a medical emergency, Part 1

Strange sources of money

I'm waiting for a bunch of money to come in from a number of sources, none of which are actual paychecks.

About $1000 should come in by next week in the form of a reimbursement check from my employer because I get my health insurance through somebody else.

$1500 should come in from a travel insurance company, reimbursement for the plane tickets we had to cancel over Thanksgiving week because I was just getting out of the hospital.

Another $1000 should come from a different travel insurance company, reimbursement for the cancelled trip I was going to take with my son for Xmas. I would be leaving a week from tomorrow, and even tho I'm a month out from surgery, there is no way I'm up to travelling alone with my four year old and all our luggage. Plus, we'd be visiting the set of grandparents who thinks "helping TBH" with the kid means watching him for ten minutes once a day so I can take a shower.

$1200 should come in from my union's disability fund since I've been out of work for over a month.

All told, I'm expecting $4700 from various sources during the next month. We're still doing okay financially (although our emergency fund is much smaller) but I'll be glad to get even one of those checks. I'm beginning to really miss getting paychecks.

Retirement savings versus cash

Against my better judgement, I just maxed out my Roth IRA for the year 2007.

Why is this against my better judgement?

Because I'm currently hoarding cash to help offset lost wages, increased childcare costs, and medical expenses that may result from my recent cancer diagnosis.

Here's how much cash we still have after I pillaged one cash account to fund my Roth IRA:

Savings accounts: $20,500
CD ladder: $11,500
Checking account: $3,700


Okay, so we have over $35K, and $24K of it is quickly accessible without forfeiting interest or incurring fees. That's enough for us to live on for at least 6 months without tightening the belt.

Where did I take the money from? I had about $3000 sitting in a money market fund in a taxable brokerage account. I've always thought of this account as my long-term savings account. This is where I fantasize about moving into a house with a bigger yard, or in a better school district. This is where I daydream about moving back to the West Coast. This is where I imagine taking my family on a round-the-world trip. This is where I research impractical graduate programs that won't improve my earning power.

But at the moment I'm feeling really content. Why would I want to move to a different, more expensive house? Now that I'm out of work and recovering from surgery, I'm falling in love with my low mortgage payments all over again. Ahh. Low stress. I love this house. And why would I want to move to West Coast when my community here has supported us so well during this crisis? And the world can wait for a while. I'll get to South America eventually. And I took a class this fall at a local college, which made me remember how much I hated school from kindergarten all the way through my master's program, so that back-to-school fantasy is not taking up too much of my headspace these days.

So that long-term savings account is just sitting there, not really growing, not really serving a purpose. It felt kind of good to pillage it and put the full amount into my Roth IRA. Since I'm working less, I'm not putting much money into my retirement accounts these days, so I still had a lot of room before I hit my contribution limit for the year.

The best part is that I can start January first with a clean slate, and begin working on my 2008 contributions. Usually I'm still putting extra pennies into my Roth for the year before, all the way up to April 15. I haven't managed to max my Roth in many years, not since the market was hot and the contribution limits were $2000 per year.

A maxed Roth. What a good feeling. Even if I might need that cash in the coming year, I also plan on being around to need it in retirement.

Maybe that's what this move was really all about. Putting money toward my long-term future instead of my short-term future is a statement to myself that I'm going to be here to spend that money 35 years from now.

Don't mess with me, cancer.

How to weather a medical emergency, Part 1

If your household is like mine, one adult in your family handles most of the finances. So what do you do when that adult is suddenly out of commission? As we learned the hard way, it's good to make sure that the spouse who doesn't usually handle the money knows how to step in and take over if necessary.

I like managing my family's investments. I like paying bills. What I do not like is keeping records.

So when my spouse asked me a couple of years ago (and last year, and six months ago) to make sure he had a complete list of all our accounts and how to access them, I procrastinated. When I ended up in the emergency room a few weeks ago and it turned into a long hospital stay, we were in trouble.

That's how I came to be lying in a bed in intensive care, trying to remember a half a dozen passwords to online accounts so my spouse could pay our bills.

Here's how I'm going to remedy the situation so my spouse will be able to handle everything the next time I'm too out of it to help.

I'm going to create a spreadsheet with a list of all our accounts. That means investment accounts, checking accounts, savings accounts, but also accounts with our local utilities, our credit cards, our cell phone company, and even my personal email accounts.

The spreadsheet will list the account numbers, web addresses, usernames, and passwords.

How am I going to make sure my passwords are secure? It is certainly a security risk to write them down. To mitigate this, I have a code system. All my passwords are based on the same code, and my spouse knows that code. So I can write down a single-digit shorthand for each password, and he can use that to extrapolate the entire password. Of course, I also intend to keep the list in a safe place.

For accounts that require regular payments, I'm going to include the approximate day of the month when they usually fall due, and describe how they're paid. For example, our cell phone bill is paid automatically through a credit card, so my spouse wouldn't have to worry about that one. On the other hand, I pay our phone bill, gas bill and electric bill through a third-party bill pay site. I'm notified by email that a bill is due, and I go to the site and log in and pay it.

Of course, it would help a lot of I shared the responsibility for managing our money with my spouse all the time. He's willing and able to do it, so why don't I share?

Well, it's partly because I'm selfish and don't want to share the fun, and it's partly because I'm just a wee bit controlling about how we spend, save and invest our money.