I had previously written a 6 month retrospective of freelancing, and now that it has been a full year, it seems wise to re-evaluate. Generally, everything has been going swimmingly, and there’s not much news to report. However, a few things have changed:

Separating Business and Personal Logistics

While I was previously paying myself a flat monthly amount based on my budget, evaluating my personal finances was still confusing with the business income being tracked alongside my personal assets. I didn’t want months without business income to look like I had lost money, as long as I was able to pay myself from business savings and stay within my budget. As such, I’ve stopped including the business checking and savings account balances in my personal assets on Mint.com and wxBanker. Now all I see coming in each month is my payment to myself without large swings from inconsistent business income, and it is very straightforward to evaluate the sustainability of my personal finances.

I’ve also incorporated as an S Corporation (Michael Rooney Inc), as this allows significant income tax savings via disbursements, plus some great benefits including a medical reimbursement plan and a Simple IRA. Acting as a corporation also can make life easier for your clients, as corporation to corporation work doesn’t require them to file a 1099, and also makes it less likely that you could be reclassified as their employee by the IRS. Talk to your accountant to see if an S Corporation is right for you!

Finally, I’ve been heavily using Freshbooks.com to track time and set up automatic recurring invoices; I just input the hours each day, and Freshbooks handles sending the client a monthly invoice.

Time & Money

While my previous goal was to maintain my salaried income working ~20 hours per week and taking lots of vacation, I’ve found that this wasn’t a good fit for me for various reasons. First, my previous salary was an arbitrary amount, and I can thrive quite well on less while still maxing out a Roth IRA and having savings leftover. Second, I don’t feel a frequent need for vacation or “escape” as my current schedule feels very relaxed, especially as I can be pickier and choose the most enjoyable work when I need to find less of it. Right now, I’m able to comfortably support my budget with ~10-12 hours of work per week; anything extra is “work for work’s sake”.

Incubation and Recurring Income

A specific goal for this year is to develop a recurring stream of monthly income from clients and incubation projects. On the client side, this comes primarily from monthly hosting and support plans. These are currently accounting for about 15% of my monthly budget, and I’d ideally get this to 25% in this quarter.

I’ve also been spending some time on incubation projects with the goal of contributing beneficial software to the world, which can be optionally supported by small recurring donations of $3-$5 per month. I think it is really cool how a personal project with only 1,000 paying users at $5/mo would generate a very significant $60K/year.

I’d love to hear from others who have iterated on their self-employed life and made improvements, or from anyone with any suggestions or comments!

 

#IPsec related #pfsense issues fixed after 2 commits, only some hours after i could express them properly. #freesoftware wins #pfsense rocks

Ubuntu phones to come with a terminal—prepare your command line skills http://t.co/yyVhSgw7 #freesoftware

RT @el1024s: Voy a hacer un plugin. Los botones van a ser gifs con fondo blanco. Nadie usa otro color de fondo. #practicity #avivenseCha ...

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(In honor of the 200th anniversary of Pride & Prejudice, a review written in a style which attempts similarity to that of Miss Austin.)

I found myself, thorough no fault of my own, suffering terribly for several days under a fever. During the course of that time, I exhausted the contents of my reading list and asked my beloved wife if I might read her favorite book, one Pride and Prejudice by a Miss Jane Austin. Here is my opinion.

Miss Austin is a talented writer. She is witty, charming, gifted in her phrasing and descriptive ability, and has a sharp, perhaps wicked, sense of humor. I don’t like her at all. Next to hers, my own prose arrives at the ear uninteresting and plain. Hateful woman. Her ability to make the mundane and silly prattle of Elizabethean women both interesting and delightful gives me cause to doubt my own abilities.

I had the privilege of attending a ball at which Miss Austin was also an attendee. A Mr. Darcy, my longtime friend at whose estate I have often passed enjoyable hours fishing for trout in his stream or listening to his delightful sister play on the piano forte, did the pleasure of introducing us. In person, I found Miss Austin engaging, insightful, and possessed of a savage ability to expose to the world the innermost parts of other attendees with a mere sentence. May I always find myself in her good favor.

During that encounter, Miss Austin enquired as to my opinion of her book, as Mr. Darcy had informed her previously of my reading it. I told her all that I have already described to you. She then asked me to be forthright and direct with her as to my personal opinion. I hesitatingly told her that, while I found her writing gifted and her skills great, I was not enamoured with her subject matter as it falls outside of my personal interests. She gave a frown and replied, “Of course, you are not among my target audience.”

We both stood silently for a moment, regarding one another. Our stern gazes met, softened, and smiles appeared. Soon we found ourselves laughing giddily and causing no small scene. In the end, we embraced and parted as friends.

I don't speak about #freesoftware since free has two meanings in English - people are more likely to pick the wrong meaning than the right.

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RT @cesarbrod: Simulação do comportamento da Tireóide com software livre #ehealth #freesoftware http://t.co/ZfNezPCm

Simulação do comportamento da Tireóide com software livre #ehealth #freesoftware http://t.co/ZfNezPCm

One thing about me is I love to orgnaise anything, be it room, books, tops, filing or conferences, to me this is in fact oddly relaxing.  Yes i appreciate I am rather alone in this thinking.

However, I missed organising events so have started up a new venture.  It’s called HacknTalk, a one day event where people can come along, work on projects, give a talk on something they have learnt or a demo on something we’ve all read about but don’t know how to use.  This idea came to me when I watched Mark Shuttleworth demo the HUD when he was over at Skycon in October of last year.  Many people had heard of the HUD, but nobody knew how to use it well. After he showed it off when using The Gimp, everyone was willing to give it a try again and people could see the logic in it.  A demo is often worth 3 blog posts

With that in mind I set about trying to find a venue in London to use as that’s where I am currently located. To my joy the Google Campus have kindly let me use their venue. The first HacknTalk will take place on Saturday March 9th from 11-5pm. Since HacknTalk is an unconference, the speaking/demo schedule will be set on the day and everyone is free to propose a talk themselves. You are of course free to come along, sit back and listen to other people’s talks but we’d like to encourage everyone to take part and talk on something they are passionate about in technology.

People are welcome to do given a talk on any topic or perhaps they wish to demonstrate something they have gotten to know well.  Talks may be short and interactive, perhaps you wish to have a discussion, or we can hold an hour of  lightning talks. We have multiple tables at our disposal, should people want to collaborate together that is also possible. Again anything is possible  what happens will be up to those who come along!

It’s not distro or language specific, anyone and everyone are welcome to come along.  Place are limited however and you do need to sign up.  There is no cost associated with this event, it really is just created so more people can get together and get more hands on experience and learn from one another.

@jerezim l'ANSSI n'est pas freesoftware-friendly ....

Beerware License, dimostrazione che quel "free" in #freesoftware non sta per "free as in beer". http://t.co/y2NpNG1I #foss #opensource

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The... http://t.co/1pbM9NRf #biglots #dollarstore #familydollar #freesoftware #freeware #microwavepopcorn #openoffice #savemoney

#FreeSoftware Sketch Drawer Sketch Drawer is a kind of photo editing software tool intended… http://t.co/4UiW1oWu

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Network Monitoring With Etherape http://t.co/1M9b0Q1c #Etherape #FreeSoftware #Linux #NetworkMonitoring #OpenSourceSoftware #Ubuntu

This week's episode talks about Ubuntu Phone while referencing a commentary by Ed Hewitt in issue sixty nine of Full Circle Magazine. In the episode's brief discussion, the call was made for Canonical to pick up more of an industrial/manufacturing arm and to actually build suitable hardware itself to run Ubuntu Phone in lieu of merely producing after-market replacement operating software for phones.

A reminder was given of the LoCo's first IRC educational session set to take place during the week on IRC in #ubuntu-us-oh. A transcript with graphics of slides interleaved is expected to be posted to the Ubuntu Wiki Infrastructure after the event.

The next episode of the program will not be released until 11 February 2013.

Download here (MP3) (ogg) (Free Lossless Audio Codec), or subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like gpodder.net.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

Items that can be purchased to ameliorate our equipment damage can be acquired here via Amazon which would then be sent directly to us upon purchase.

Put your #internetmarketing on steroids with this viral #freesoftware here ➤➤➤ http://t.co/s9li18XQ #goodwill