Feature Writer Alena Roberts – The Ups and Downs of Self-Employment
I am the queen of frugality, and I thrive on stability, so if you told me that I would ever be self-employed, I would say you were crazy. But here I am with three part-time jobs. The good news is that I like all of my jobs, the bad news is that they still don’t earn me the kind of money I would like to be earning. I think, though, that there is a lot to be said about self-employment when you’re disabled, so I want to tell you what I think are the benefits and drawbacks to the world of self-employment.
We’ll start with the benefits. Number one, of course is that my home is my office. If I don’t have anywhere to go for the day I can roll out of bed and stay in my pj’s if I want to. Having my home as my office also means I can work in a comfortable spot on the couch or set up a real office situation with a desk and comfy chair.
The second benefit is that all of my jobs are contract work, so I decide on my hours. If I don’t want to work until 10:00 I don’t have to. My bosses give me deadlines and projects sometimes, but I still get to decide when I want to do my assigned tasks.
The third, and one of the best, benefits has to be that I’m doing work that I like. When I started getting involved with social media and the great blind community, I knew that I wanted to work promoting a company that I believed in. Working for Sendero allows me to do that. The next thing that I found a passion for was helping people learn how to use technology that could enhance their lives. Working for the commission for the blind as their Apple computer consultant and VoiceOver specialist feeds that passion. Finally, my joy of writing led me to blogging and now being a writer for this wonderful magazine.
Now that you know the benefits, here comes what I believe are the drawbacks. I mentioned at the beginning that I’m not earning very good money. This isn’t because I’m self-employed, it just happens to be that none of my jobs pay a lot. There are numerous people who earn very good money being self-employed, but they usually have to be charging their clients a lot of money per hour, or be working more hours than I am.
The other major drawback for me is that I have to worry about taxes. When I get my checks, no money has been taken out for taxes. This means that I’m earning even less money. Thankfully I’m extremely frugal and I love saving money, so hopefully when the tax bill arrives next year I won’t completely freak out.
So, if you find that you either don’t like the work you’re doing, or that you just can’t find a regular job, consider looking at self-employment. Self-employment jobs can include everything from doing contract work like I do to owning your own business. Just remember that to be good at any job, you have to be motivated and want to be successful at the work you’re doing.
I very much enjoyed reading this. I am this close to just throwing in the towel with regards to employment, but everyone wants me to pursue it so I guess I may somehow. I am just freaked out by the thought of going through vocational rehabilitation, due in part to my state being ranked dead worst concerning services for people with disabilities. I have two nonprofit jobs which I love, and I previously worked at a nonprofit which is more or less defunct. I love all this assistive technology, so perhaps I’ll someday be able to start my own tech business. Who knows? Anyway, this is great information.