I’ve been professionally translating for a while now and I’ve had my business since June 2009. Ever since, I’ve been longing for a job with regular pay and benefits like a pension and the ability to fall back on welfare if I have to. It’s not that I hate running my own business… well maybe it kind of is. There are a few things I really wish I didn’t have to do. The drawbacks:
- Looking for work. This hasn’t been an issue for me so far, but I dread the day on which I can’t find a new project. Times are tough and I’m not very experienced yet. The irony of companies asking for experience all the time is not lost on me: I need to get experience but I can’t get a job because they all require the experience I still need. The lack of job security can really get to me at times. How will I pay the rent if I can’t find work for a couple of months in a row? I won’t and I’ll have a problem.
- Managing my money. I’ve always had a hole in my hand, a black hole no less. Money disappears into it, nothing much comes back and I wonder where the hell it all went. Usually I find out I spent it on things like that one gadget I loved or nights out in Amsterdam, stuff like that. Putting aside half of what I see coming in has proven difficult for me, even though I thought I had it all figured out. Moving to Castricum made me take money out of that account, because I needed stuff for home improvement. I need more discipline when it comes to keeping money for taxes and BTW (VAT) in my account.
- The paperwork. Since my financial skills are quite poor already, I got myself a bookkeeper. She handles my mom’s bookkeeping as well so we drive over to her house once per quarter and we dump our paperwork. I would never have got it right by myself. Of course, a bookkeeper isn’t free so I earn a bit less each month. The paperwork still does take extra time; the so-called non-billable hours can fill up that fifth day of my working week. I need to invoice, which is quite easy but still takes time and then I need to check, double-check and double-double-check whether I get paid. Which brings me to:
- Agencies, ugh! IBM pays agencies after 70 days when they invoice. The first agency I worked for told me “yeah we can’t pay you until after 30 days” (this got me into some serious trouble in June last year since I didn’t know payment would take 30 days). So I settled, neatly put ‘pay within 30 days’ on my invoice. They did pay on time, except for with the last invoice when they ‘forgot’ to add the traveling expenses.
Then I switched agencies, and I was told “yeah unfortunately we can’t pay you until after 60 days” (which -again- got me in trouble, since I moved at that particular time). I complied again, even though I don’t know if agencies can even do this. So far, they’ve consistently not paid me on time, so the term lasted (almost) 70 days anyway. I made a reminder e-mail just to make sure they actually pay me after those 60 days. It got me an out-of-office autoreply today.
I hear people who love having a company, but I don’t understand them much. Sure, you can deduct almost all VAT on stuff you buy and you get to browse at the Makro store, but those are about all the benefits I can see. If I got a regular job, it would be much easier money-wise and I’d actually be done working when going home. Also, I like job security. Though I have to say, mentioning to people that you run a business is simply awesome.