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Update: Nine Months of Being Self-Employed

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 48 Comments

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Update- Nine Months of Being Self-EmployedMy last day at my day job was in the beginning of October of 2013.

That means it’s been around 9 months since I left my day job to pursue full-time freelancing.

It feels like it’s been much longer than nine months though. Time is flying by, but it also feels like it’s been forever since I drove to work and sat in my office unhappily for nine hours each day.

I still remember when I first told my employer that I was leaving. I was dreading the day. I was extremely nervous about what my bosses would say (in my head I was a complete wreck), and I kept saying to myself “Six months from now all of this will be long forgotten.”

Now, it’s been nine months and I haven’t looked back once. I still have no regrets and I am EXTREMELY happy with the decision I made.

Self-employment is still going very well. I am enjoying each and every single day. I enjoy waking up, working, having a flexible schedule, and everything else that has been going on.

Below is my update after being self-employed for nine months.

 

Not having a commute is still wonderful.

I don’t see this ever changing. Yes, I like car rides but I don’t like them when the end goal is to take me to a boring and stressful job.

Being able to just wake up and get straight to work is a great thing. Yes, this usually means that I stay in my pajamas for a good portion of the morning (hmmm maybe into the afternoons), but it’s nice to be able to complete so much work in the early mornings.

 

I’m still getting in more “socialization” even though I work from home.

When I decided to make the switch to working from home, many people seemed worried that I would be bored and lonely.

The truth has actually been the exact opposite.

When I had my day job, there was no talking whatsoever. It was extremely boring and not having a single office friend (I worked independently in a field filled with men who were 45 and older) got old really quick.

Now, I can see my friends and family during the day when they are off from work (I have too many nurse friends). I also talk to other bloggers and readers pretty much all day long as well.

 

The thought of unstable income.

The unstable income is something that still gets me every now and then. There are weeks where I will make hardly no money, and, of course, times like those can make a person nervous.

As a freelancer, I’m sure these slow weeks make most nervous because it almost feels like everything has dropped off the face of the earth.

 

Traveling and being location independent.

One big positive of self-employment for me is the fact that all I need in order to work is a laptop and an internet connection. This means that I can pretty much work from wherever I want.

I have been traveling a lot so far this summer (one week in Vegas, 2 weeks in Colorado, one week in the Caribbean), and I worked nearly the whole time as well. I just scheduled as much as I could ahead of time, and then I brought my laptop to complete tasks along the way as well.

I would like to become more location independent then this though. We have been thinking about taking a long hiking/camping trip where we would drop off our car someplace and hike on some amazing trail that is thousands of miles long (okay, maybe just hundreds of miles to start off with).

I’m just not sure how that would work though as I, of course, still need to work.

Any ideas? Or is this completely hopeless? Haha a girl can dream right?

 

I still enjoy freelancing.

When I publicly announced that I was making the switch, I had many people tell me that I would grow to hate freelancing. That has not been the case at all.

I still love freelancing, and I enjoy it more and more every day. It’s great to actually be my own boss. I love how everything I do affects my business and that I am actually growing a business of my own.

What else do you want to know about my nine months of being self-employed? How is self-employment treating you?

 

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About Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Michelle is the founder of Making Sense of Cents, a blog about personal finance and traveling. She discusses how her business has evolved in her side income series. She paid off $40,000 in student loans by the age of 24 mainly due to her freelancing side hustles. Click here to learn more about starting a blog!

Comments

  1. Nicola says

    It’s so nice to hear you’re still enjoying it! The idea of being location independent must be tempting – it’ll be interesting to see where you take that idea.

    Reply

    • Michelle S. says

      Thanks Nicola!

      And, yes I’m loving being able to work from wherever so far. We do have dogs though and we are about to lose our dog sitter (my sister is moving to Chicago), so I’m not sure how much traveling we can really do after this unless we take them everywhere with us.

      Reply

  2. Aileen says

    I love hearing other peoples thoughts on being self employed. Our dream is to become location independent as well. My husband is not at all into anything that can be done on the computer, so it would basically be up to me to bring in the income when we travel. We’d love to spend a year in an RV traveling around the US!

    Reply

  4. Thomas @ i need money ASAP! says

    Hey Michelle, I have a question. I know you had pretty steady income before you made the switch, but did you ever have that fear of failure and if so how did you over come it? I’d like to make the switch some day to self employment but the thought of giving up a steady paycheck for an income stream that’s more unpredictable makes me a bit nervous. Did you ever have that problem and how did you handle it?

    Reply

    • FI Pilgrim says

      Thomas, I’ve had the same nervousness as you for years, even though I have an entrepreneurial bug. I made progress by paying off my mortgage so that my monthly expenses were much lower, which will give me much more forgiveness if something doesn’t go perfectly. My family is also in a much smaller house than we once were so that we can afford for me to change jobs and my wife to stay at home still.

      Those options might not be for you, perhaps saving a small “nest egg” that assists with your income would be a better route?

      Reply

    • Michelle S. says

      Yes, I definitely had the fear of failure. I eventually just had to throw myself into my employer’s office and told that I was leaving so that I couldn’t turn back haha. That was my way of getting over it. Also, having a REALLY well-funded emergency fund helps as well.

      Reply

  5. [email protected] says

    I’m glad you’re so happy, Michelle! Nothing is perfect, but I like self-employment too. What stinks for me is that I am location independent but Greg is not. I am still tied down to his job, even though I can basically work anywhere.

    Reply

  6. John @ Wise Dollar says

    Very cool Michelle! I can relate to that feeling of being nervous and dreading the day, but it was the best decision, professionally speaking, that I’ve ever made. I wish I could say the nervousness over pay subsides, it really hasn’t for me yet but it is encouraging to see growth.

    Reply

  7. Carley Green says

    Hi Michelle, I can see that you started this blog much earlier than quitting your job. That was a smart move. I am sure you realized by now that you need to be much organized, plan and budget well when you are working for yourself. Once you eliminate the downsides of being self-employed you can enjoy many benefits of it. The problem of having fluctuating income is common in business. But you can save money on rent since you don’t have to pay high rents to be near work and save on automobile expenses as you don’t have to commute. And you can put those and other similar savings away for rainy days. You need to have a larger contingency savings in the bank when you are the boss. Love your blog by the way.

    Reply

  9. Kayla @ Shoeaholicnomore says

    I’m glad you are still loving freelancing and being self-employed. I would love a post from you about how you keep coming up with topic ideas to write about since you do so much writing for lots of different sites.

    Reply

    • Michelle S. says

      Thanks! It really helps that I write for a wide range of websites. I write for one website that is all about Europe (takes a lot of research), a travel blog, an investing blog, and several personal finance blogs.

      Reply

  10. Rebecca @ Stapler Confessions says

    That’s great! I have to admit that my forced self-employment (also in October 2013!) has me pretty happy with my work-life balance. I like being able to choose my hours. It works better for my family. Although, I wish I could get my income back up to where it was when I was full-time employed.

    Reply

  12. Michelle S. says

    Yes, I found it extremely hard to set a schedule. I found myself working all the time because I was afraid that if I didn’t work all the time that everything would just go downhill.

    Reply

  13. MomCents says

    First ~I love your blog!
    Second ~ Thank you for sharing this story

    I have TONS I want to know and you may have answered it in other posts, but since you asked….

    – How did you prepare to leave your job? Did you have a set amount of money you needed in the bank before you were comfortable taking the plunge?

    – Did you set a threshold of how much income you needed to generate while still working your job consistently before you left, or did you just take a leap of faith?

    – Were there any expenses you didn’t foresee? I’m guessing you probably accounted for retirement and insurance…anything else?

    Very inspiring!!!

    Reply

    • Michelle S. says

      Hey!

      I wrote a post about how I prepared to leave my job. You can find that here – https://www.makingsenseofcents.com/2013/06/prepare-for-self-employment.html

      Yes, I made sure I had a well funded emergency fund. I am an EXTREME worrier so that was one of my main goals.

      I mainly just took a leap of faith. I still make a very similar amount of income each month as I did when I had my day job.

      I don’t think there were any expenses I didn’t see. We are now paying for health insurance and it’s $200 a month for the both of us for absolutely horrible coverage. We had a $12K deductible now.

      Reply

  14. Nichole says

    I love when you do these updates. I’m so glad you’re still loving it (though I also work in a boring office, so I can’t imagine if I ever actually had a chance to leave, would I even miss it, lol).

    Reply

  15. Charlotte says

    Time flies when you’re having fun, eh?
    Congrats on the first nine months, Michelle! I’m so glad to hear that you’re finding a routine/rhythm, enjoying freelancing and still managing to scale your business so successfully. Keep it up!

    Reply

  18. Sarah Greesonbach says

    I’m just rounding 10 months myself, and I agree with everything you’ve got going on here. I feel sooooo mature compared to my cubicle-self and her fancy ideas about what freelancing would be like. Fortunately, the reality is just as awesome in certain ways! Well done!

    Reply

  19. Melissa says

    Michelle, I’m so excited and happy for you! It really sounds like you got into a good mindset, and had a long time of success behind you, before you started freelancing, which probably made it easier to ‘make the leap.’ I don’t think you’ll miss working at all, especially since you seem to have a clear path to continue earning money & blogging.

    One question: do you plan on making any more of your businesses ‘automated’? I’ve read other PF bloggers say their ultimate goal is to make passive income, but it seems like freelancing and even content managing could never be ‘passive income’ since, duh, you have to be there to write or manage social media accounts. 🙂 What do you think about relying completely on passive income – something you want to do eventually or not so much?

    Reply

    • Michelle S. says

      I don’t think I ever want to be completely passive. I still like to write, be involved in the blogging community and everything else that comes along with it 🙂

      Reply

  20. Dan @ Our Big Fat Wallet says

    Hey Michelle, a question from someone who is still learning the basics of a blog. How long before you started to notice a decent amount of traffic (and income) from the site? It looks great by the way and your story is very encouraging

    Reply

  22. Tie the Money Knot says

    It’s great that you’re getting socialization to a good extent, as it’s something many don’t think enough about before working outside of the office. I’ve heard from a few others who work from home or are self-employed spending a lot of time at home, and the socialization (lack of it) part was an issue. Glad that this potential issue is a non-issue for you!

    Reply

  24. DNN says

    There’s pros and cons to self-employed. Self-employment puts anyone in a position to be a future “side hustle millionaire.” another approach is working on your own terms without anyone standing over your shoulder and pressuring you to meet a quota. The conscious self employment is spending many days alone. Another con is being miss understood and seen as crazy because you dared to venture out as an aspiring entrepreneur and go beyond the norm. Another con is building your business as a future [side hustle millionaire] without any guarantees of financial success or achieving “online millionaire” status. But another Pro to self-employment is working harder for yourself so that you make more than enough money to never again go back to the “day job” scene. 🙂

    Reply

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