The Money Book gets a mention in a Policygenius Article on Freelancers

Image by Thought Catalog via Unsplash.

I was interviewed recently for a short piece up at Policygenius. The topic is money and freelancing, a topic Denise and I explored exhaustively in our book, The Money Book for Freelancers.

Check out the article here, if only to see how I can manage to work the word “freaking” into a serious personal finance piece.

The article was written by reporter Hanna Horvath, who I was delighted to discover had once been a features editor at the same newspaper I worked at in college, The Daily Orange.

Thanks, Hanna. Nice meeting you.

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5 Things Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" Taught Me About the Freelance Life

The other night I watched Billy Wilder’s subversive 1960 film, The Apartment, and it got me—a freelancer—thinking about the trade-offs we all make in the business world. The movie tells the story of a devoted organization man played by Jack Lemmon, who loans his Manhattan apartment to a group of men of power and wealth, who use his pad for their liaisons with various mistresses.

Lemmon’s character doesn’t admire their dalliances but goes along with the charade because he believes it will advance his career. He is a man accustomed to disappointment; his job is crushingly dull, and he could easily waste his life as a spiritless drone in the corporate machine.

So he sets his sights on bigger things, but his bosses’ promises to him are about as the good as the promises they make to the women they squire.

Shirley Maclaine is one of them. A slick Fred MacMurray strings her along with promises to someday divorce his wife. Despairing, she swallows pills to off herself, only to be rescued by Lemmon. Director Billy Wilder pulls all of this together as a brilliant piece of black comedy. Forty-eight years later, the film offers fine lessons for the employed and self-employed alike:

• Accept that life is all about trade-offs. It’s easy to mock the corporate world. Cliches abound: For 11 holidays a year and a poorly managed 401k, it sucks your soul dry. Ah, but the freelance life has its trade-offs, too. In exchange for your freedom, you’ve got to got to make your peace with the beast of insecurity gnawing at your guts.

• Be aware that freelancer can also be manipulated and used. Clients who want something for nothing, who crave ceaseless hand-holding, and who never know when the project is over feast on your soul just as much as the bosses on the 27th floor.

• Be prepared to confront your morality every day. Just how far are you willing to go for a client? What will you, or won’t you, do? The Apartment dances around the issue of sex, but I’m talking about business ethics. Your code. What you stand for. Consider: the 2008 housing crash happened in part because far too many people—realtors, bankers, mortgage brokers, appraisers, and yes, buyers and sellers—routinely gamed a system that was bound to fail. When they should have acted honorably, they looked the other way. Learn to say no. Say it early and often.

• Know that redemption comes at a price. Call quits on the game, and you risk loss of work, respect, and whatever power you may have seized for yourself. But if you can accept the consequences of your actions, you will always be free.

• Remember that some things are worth more than the gig. If you don’t have work now, and you turn down a potential client because you know working for him or her will be more trouble than it’s worth, resist the impulse to look at the experience negatively. Yes, you may have lost a paycheck. But you have gained peace of mind and perhaps the knowledge that you were right. Try pricing those out sometime.

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* This post first appeared in slightly different form on my old blog, Feb. 13, 2008.

Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your free ebook, go here. Thanks — Joseph D’Agnese

Yes, You Really Do Have to Pay Estimated Taxes

For tax season, I’m running some of my older posts pertaining to our book, The Money Book for Freelancers.*

If there’s one lesson we learned as we interviewed experts for our book, it’s this: “Pay your estimated taxes.” This is the single biggest mistake freelancers make. They don’t pay their estimated taxes, and come April 15th, they’re shocked by how much money they have to come up with. No one likes paying taxes, but if you pay a little now, and a little throughout the year, you’re in better shape to deal with the final number come April.

Estimated taxes in the USA are due four times a year, in April, June, September and January. The dates may seem a little arbitrary. After all, shouldn’t quarterly taxes be paid every three months?

Short answer: No. The IRS makes the rules, so they can basically run roughshod over the Gregorian Calendar. On June 15th, you owe Uncle Sam some portion of the income you earned between April 1 and May 31. You get a two-month period at that point but get a four-month period at the end of the year. Quarter 4 estimated taxes are due January 15th, based on income earned September 1 to December 31. The official IRS websites on these matters is here and here. If you think it will help you, go ahead and mark these periods and the due dates on your calendar.

Skipping estimated taxes until the end of the year is not really an option. That only sets you up for penalties and interest. How much do you need to pay? The only person who can tell you that is your tax preparer. Chances are, when you get your annual taxes done, your tax guru printed up some vouchers for you to use come estimated-tax time. If so, then you’re golden. Dig out those vouchers and send in what’s printed on the forms. One goes to the feds, the other to the state in which you reside.

If you didn’t have your taxes done by a tax preparer back in April, then oy, oy, oy. You are making us nuts. After we went and told you in our book how important it was to have someone like that!

Some tips for finding that person.

 Our Tax Preparer Wish List 

1. Someone who, duh, knows taxes. You don’t necessarily need an accountant (although depending on your business, you may) and accountants can be more expensive. What you do need is someone who specializes in taxes, and who works with a number of self-employed clients. Be sure to ask.

2. Someone who charges a reasonable, yearly fee, depending on the complexity of your return. If you work alone, are struggling to make a profit and have a pretty manageable return, you shouldn’t be paying the same rate as someone who has 10 employees and a net profit of $250K. 

3. You absolutely, positively want someone you can contact throughout the year to ask about quarterly tax payments and retirement investments. This is key. At the end of each quarter, you should be able to send an email to your tax preparer, telling her how much money you’ve earned in that quarter, and asking her to calculate your estimated taxes. You should also ask her to send you the vouchers you’ll need to mail in your various payments. It’s her job to do this for you. If she is unwilling to do this, wants too much money to perform this task, or is too distracted with other things to get back to you, get another accountant. You deserve someone who takes your business seriously.

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Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your free ebook, go here. Thanks — Joseph D’Agnese

Why are you tossing your receipts?

During the USA’s long slog toward April 15th, tax day, I’m running some of my older posts pertaining to our book, The Money Book for Freelancers.*

Every time I use an ATM machine, I’m amazed to see how many discarded receipts litter the ground under the machine or overflow the nearby wastepaper basket. I’m equally astonished whenever I hear customers decline a sales clerk’s offer to print out receipt. I don’t understand why anyone would toss out such useful pieces of information.

Freelancers are trained by nature—and hopefully by our book—to hang onto every receipt that passes through their hands. There’s a now-classic literary character, J. Sutter, a freelancer and former journalist, in Colson Whitehead’s novel John Henry Days, who lives for receipts. One scene in the book, if I’m not mistaken, has him chasing someone else’s fluttering receipt in an airport concourse so he can pad out his expense account.

I’m not Sutter, but I do hang on to every freaking receipt that comes my way. Back in the day, I used Quicken software to reconcile transactions from my bank with the receipts I’d collected during the week. Throughout the year, I’d keep all my tax-relevant receipts and file them away for safe-keeping after I did my taxes. These days, we use Banktivity software, but we still do roughly the same thing. Rather than save the paper receipts, we scan them daily or weekly, file the the digital scans in an Evernote folder, and toss the paper. It’s a handy system that I’m not likely to give up anytime soon.

Receipts, even those boring little ATM ones, are a snapshot of a specific moment in time. On Monday, August 21 at 13:53 o’clock you were standing at 123 Oak Street withdrawing $40 from an ATM, getting dinged $3.50 in the process. Or two days later, August 23, you got $40 cash back when you bought groceries at the market down the road.

One day, two weeks or a month later, when you’re trying to reconcile your various accounts using whatever financial software you use, are you really going to remember those seemingly inconsequential events? Probably not. But you’ll stare at the transaction you just downloaded from your bank and say to yourself, “What the hell did I spend $43.50 on? And where the hell is 123 Oak Street?”

If you had treasured that worthless scrap of paper instead of casting it to the four winds, you’d have the answer right in front of you. Instead, you’re beating your head against a wall, wondering why you can’t get a handle on your money.

If you can commit to using some form of financial software, and train yourself to hang onto these receipts, you’ll always have access to the little financial moments that flit through your life.

Get it in your head: You’re a freelancer. This is what you do. You save receipts. Period. This is what I’d like you do, just to get comfortable with this concept. This week, request a receipt for every single transaction you make through your daily life. Don’t just ask for it. SAVE it. If you share income with your partner, ask them to do the same. It’s not really a big deal.

At the end of the day, dump out all the receipts fro your wallet or purse and place them in a dedicated location in your home. Use anything from a paperclip to an inbox to keep the paper tidy.

Later, when you have a chance, use those receipts to catch up on your finances with some kind of financial software, whether it’s a Quicken on your computer, mint.com, or what have you. It’s a tiny little habit to get yourself into, but most people will not take the trouble do it, unless someone tells them to.

Guess what: I just told you.

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Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your free ebook, go here. Thanks — Joseph D’Agnese

Five Money Mistakes Freelancers Make

For tax season, I’m running some of my older posts pertaining to our book, The Money Book for Freelancers.*

This was supposed to be the year you got your financial house in order. Get more organized. Earn more. Spend less. And reach unparalleled heights in your career.

If only you knew where to start.

We’d like to suggest that if you do anything, nip these five bad habits in the bud now, so you never have to worry about them again. We consider them to be the five primo mistakes all self-employed people make. If you correct them before they become long-term engrained problems, you’ll be in good shape to move forward with most of your financial goals.

Heck, you might even be able to skip the financial resolutions next year, and go right to the fun ones, like, “I resolve to vacation more, and never worry about money again.”

Mistake #1: Not Having an Emergency Fund

Everyone should have a stash of cash set aside in case of unexpected financial disasters and interrupted income. In fact, we’d argue that freelancers need this fund even more than traditionally employed people do, because their income is a lot more erratic. Even if you’re a crackerjack freelancer, with tons of work coming in and invoices constantly flying out the door, there are still going to be dry spells. When that happens, it would be nice to have some money set aside to dip into.

But alas, few freelancers make a habit of socking away money regularly in such an account. Don’t let that be you. It doesn’t have to be a great deal of money. Five percent from every check that comes in the door is a good amount to save, and you’ll hardly ever notice it’s missing. Just make sure the money is deposited into a bank account that is not linked to an ATM card, so you can’t raid it on a lark. And see to it that the money is kept “liquid”—not linked to important investments or burdened with any withdrawal restrictions. A checking account at an online bank is the perfect place for the cash. Just an arm’s distance away, but close enough to tap into if need it. How much should you save? Start with one month’s living expenses, and then see if you can push it to three or six.

Mistake #2: Not Saving for Taxes

One of the blessings—and curses—of being self-employed is not having an employer who withholds your taxes from every paycheck you receive. When you bill a client, you bill for the whole enchilada. And when you get paid, you get the whole enchilada too. The trouble is, when tax time comes around, that tasty treat has long been gobbled up. Make sure you’ve left enough of that enchilada to give the tax man the taste he needs.

The worst time to start thinking about your taxes is weeks or even days before you have to pay them. Ideally, you want to be socking away money throughout the year, a little out of every single check that comes in the door. That way, you can slowly save up a tax nest egg. Not sure how much to take out? Not a problem. Look at your tax documents from the last two or three years, and calculate about how much you have been paying the tax man, expressed as a percentage of your total income. Start saving that percentage out of every paycheck. This number varies wildly from freelancer to freelancer, so mind your own business—not someone else’s.

Mistake #3: Not Paying Estimated Taxes

What good is saving that tax money if you don’t use it to pay The Man? In our research we discovered that accountants meet plenty of well-intentioned yet sad freelancers who do not pay their estimated taxes during the year, and who then feel doubly screwed when they have to settle up at year’s end. We’ve never understood this mentality: Would you rather pay $1,250 four times a year, or be forced to come up with $5,000 (and penalties and interest) in one lump sum once a year?

It’s a no-brainer: Paying in small, manageable chunks really makes a difference. It’s easier on your pocket, and you are less likely to blow that tax money on a spur-of-the-moment vacation to the Bahamas if you pay your taxes on a quarterly basis. If you develop the good habit of saving for your taxes, then you should develop the equally good habit of disbursing those funds in a timely fashion throughout the year. A good accountant or tax preparer should be able to help you with this.

Mistake #4: Not Treating Yourself Like a Business

Even if you are a company of one, you are a business. That means organizing your finances as any responsible business would. If you are not already, begin tracking income and expenses down to the penny. Receipts are your friend—never let them slip away. Financial software programs—such as Quicken or mint.com—can take some of the pain out of this chore and help make tax time a cinch. If you need to send and track invoices, manage clients, and do time-tracking, use something like FreshBooks or QuickBooks. 

And that’s just for starters. You must cultivate an interest in all things business. You must have business cards. You must have a website. You must develop a system for receiving and returning phone calls in a timely fashion. You must have a logo and stationery. You must have a retirement account. You must develop a process that keeps you connected to the rest of the business world, and you must execute it flawlessly in all your dealings with others.

Amazingly, this is hard for a lot of people to do. “I’m a website designer,” they say. Or, “I write software. I don’t want to be bothered learning about business. I don’t want to learn about investments or credit card accounts or invoicing. It’s boring.” Okay, fine. Just understand that if you don’t want to deal with these little details, if you can’t get psyched about this geeky stuff, you must hire someone to help take care of it for you. And don’t let us catch you bitching about it, either. If you don’t want to do it, you must be willing to pay for it. Your business won’t take care of itself.

Mistake #5: Living for the Big Score

A financial planner we interviewed told us that all self-employed people, including himself, are dreamers. They throw themselves into their work, trying to achieve their great vision, and forget about socking away small amounts of money for themselves along the way. Some people, if they do get money, stick it back in the business. “Once I land this big project, sell this book, launch this product, or share my great invention with the world,” they tell themselves, “THEN I’ll have so much money that I’ll be able to finally save for retirement.”

Folks, this is crazy talk. This is how cat burglars think: They live their lives as if waiting for the big score, which never freaking materializes. So do this today: Start saving a little from each paycheck for your retirement. It doesn’t have to be very much. Just let it be something. If you must trick yourself, pay a little extra to your emergency fund and then redistribute from that to a dedicated retirement account. We all think we’re going to live forever but that is not true. Time flies, and you may not have the time you think you have to build up a substantial nest egg. “I’ve a great life and a great career,” a ruggedly handsome, athletic-looking designer told us at a book fair recently. “I have tons of clients and I’m never without work. The problem is, I’m fifty-five and I don’t have anything set aside for retirement.” That’s a problem. Learn from this gent’s mistake. Start saving for retirement today, and let today mean today.

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* This post first appeared in slightly different form on the FreshBooks blog on January 12, 2011.

Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your free ebook, go here. Thanks — Joseph D’Agnese

The four, no, SIX bank accounts every freelancer needs

For tax season, I’m running some posts from my old blog pertaining to our book, The Money Book for Freelancers.*

The problems that arise with money and the freelance life are often ones of organization. If you set up your financial accounts properly, your financial goals will be right in front of you every time you check your finances. The way I see it, every independent worker (i.e., sole proprietor) should have at least FOUR bank accounts. I’m just talking about US workers right now.

1. The Spending/Bill-paying Account: The account into which you deposit every check you receive.

2. The Emergency Account: Contains 3 to 6 months of living expenses, if you can swing it.

3. The Tax Account: Collects the money you need to pay your estimated and annual taxes.

4. The Retirement Account: Collects the money you want to contribute to your retirement until you have enough to start investing.

I consider these accounts to be the minimum you must have to run a successful freelance business. Later, when you’re ready to advance, I’d consider adding two more accounts:

5. The Medical Account: Collects money for health insurance premiums, Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), and so on.

6. The Dream Account: Collects money for your future dreams: a house, an apartment, a car, a business, or for your as-yet-unborn children.

This is pretty much the advice we offer in The Money Book for Freelancers. You might think that keeping so many separate accounts is unnecessarily complicated. But we’ve found that if you don’t have a separate place to keep money earmarked for Retirement, say, you won’t save for retirement. You’ll find other, equally important things to spend that money on before you have a chance to save it. The same goes for the tax and emergency accounts. If you don’t consistently save money to pay your estimated and annual taxes, you’ll end up scrambling each quarter or as each April 15th approaches to find the money to cover your tax bill. So separate is smart.

Nearly every bank has some kind of online presence these days, but we like ones primarily based online—such as Ally or Capital One 360—for a couple of reasons:

• Most online banks offer better interest rates than brick-and-mortar banks.

• Most allow you to open a new account at will at any time, so you don’t have to bother making time to visit a physical bank and to talk to a flesh-and-blood bank officer.

• Most allow you to apply a nickname to your accounts.

Little things make a big difference. Imagine logging on to your list of online accounts and seeing them in front of you with nicknames such as “My Rainy Day Account,” “My Waitin’ For the Taxman Account,” “My To-Be-Invested Retirement Account.” Names like this are focused on your specific needs, and far more personal than a list of account numbers that are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

Back in the day, we used to recommend keeping a local bank because it was still necessary to have an institution where you could drop by to deposit a physical check. Back then, the only way to get money into an online bank account was to transfer it from your local bank, or to mail in a paper check, which took daaaaaaaaays. Now almost all these online banks have an app that allows you to scan or photograph your check and deposit it in a flash.

How much should your save from every check? That’s a question for another day. For now, start investigating some good online savings banks at Bankrate.com. You will want a personal checking account for the spending/bill-paying account, and a savings account for the other accounts. US banking rules govern limit your withdrawals or checks you can write out of a savings account to 6 per month, but typically the interest on those savings accounts will be higher than your checking account.

Some savings accounts have an ATM card option, but it’s best to decline ones that do. The more obstacles you can put in your way, the less likely you’ll be to raid those accounts when emergencies occur.

Always check the interest rates. Historically online banks offered better terms than brick-and-mortar banks, but that’s not always the case.

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* This post first appeared on my old blog August 30, 2006.

Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your free ebook, go here.

10 Things I Learned About William Faulkner and Money

One essay that has stuck with me for years is Eudora Welty’s review of The Letters of William Faulkner. In her hands a picture emerges of Faulkner as a writer doing all he can to make ends meet.

In his lifetime, Faulkner won three major awards that put him in a category of his own—the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, and the Nobel Prize. People want to imagine great writers carefully crafting their work for weeks, months, years at a time. But how much time a writer spends on a piece of work varies greatly. Flannery O’Connor was an incredibly slow writer. But the Faulkner of these letters is a frantic craftsman who cranks out short stories as fast as he can because he desperately needs the money. (By most estimates, he wrote 125 of them, though scholars continue to debate that figure.)

Faulkner nailed down a timeline for cranking them out. He knew, for example, that if he wrote a story in a week, got it in the mail by Friday, that an editor would buy it the following week and he’d have a check the week after. What a charming time to have lived in, when a writer would be paid so quickly!

If you’re interested in how writers really make a living, I urge you to get a hold of Welty’s book, Faulkner’s, or both.

Some tidbits from Welty’s essay:

• Faulkner “hoped to hell” that Paramount Pictures would buy his scandalous 1931 novel, Sanctuary, because when his father died, Mother Faulkner only had enough money to live for a year. “Then it is me,” he writes, meaning that he would then be solely responsible for supporting her. (Paramount released the movie, dubbed The Story of Temple Drake, in 1933.)

• At one point Faulkner's working on two novels at a time, and cranking out one short story a month because he’s got to pay his and his mother’s bills, and he can never rule out the possibility that his brothers and other relatives will hit him up for money.

• He thinks of everything he writes in terms of its earning potential, because, as he says: “By God I’ve got to!”

• At one point, he starts cranking out TWO short stories a week, and he wonders if he can keep up this kind of schedule because it’s killing him.

• To help him out, his New York publishers begin advancing him money. (I’ve read that these sorts of informal arrangements were the origin of the modern-day publisher’s advance, but I don’t know enough about the history of publishing to say more than this.)

• Faulkner goes to Hollywood to make some cash and bitches that the studio contracts are so weaselly that he longs for a relationship built on “good faith and decency,” like the ones he has with editors back in New York.

• He devises a plan to write six short stories, sell them each for a $1,000 apiece to The Saturday Evening Post, and live off the windfall for six months while he writes a book. But he’s freaking out because he’s only been able to sell one of these short stories and that wasted effort can now only be pitched “into the trash.” To hell with fame, craft, acclaim. If a story can’t make him money, it’s worthless.

• His usual outlets were paying him $300 to $400 a short story but the Post was the king at $1,000 a pop. (In the days before television or even radio, a major magazine like The Saturday Evening Post paid so well because its circulation was so vast. Americans had few other outlets for mass entertainment.)

• One year he concocts a crazy scheme to hock his mules and mares to raise some cash but he runs out of horseflesh to pawn.

• At one point he confesses that he doesn’t have a carbon copy of the short story he sent, and can’t afford to wait for his agent or editor’s requested changes because he needs the money too badly. So he rewrites the story from memory, incorporating the edits, and sends it on its way.

There’s lots more, but I think you get the point. Writers write for themselves, and they write for money. Some of the best writers wrote quickly, but that did not taint the work. The stories were just fine because they had talent in spades.

I think of the (only three) creative writing classes I’ve taken or the MFA programs some friends of mine have pursued, and cringe to recall how much time we all wasted talking about how to make a particular story better. That approach can help, but it is purely academic. One takeaway from the Faulkner story is this: You don’t make bad stories better by rewriting them; you write increasingly better stories by writing as often as you can.

Oh—that hastily rewritten piece of crap that Faulkner spat out from memory turns out to have been “The Bear,” one of the most-read and most-anthologized Faulkner short stories, ever.

What a talented son of a bitch. We should all be so money-hungry.

I’ll leave you with one last Faulkner quote: “The man who said that the pinch of necessity, butcher's and grocer's bills and insurance hanging over his head, is good for the artist, is a damned fool.”

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This post first appeared February 22, 2012 in slightly different form on my old blog. I’m repubbing it here in an effort to collect all my significant posts in one place.

Reading and revising this piece reminded me of another writer who famously wrote about money struggles. I should have a post on that up shortly.

In general, I’ve been trying to post more regularly here. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your free ebook, go here.

Time Is Not Money. Sleep Is.

Zzzzzzzzzz….

You’re on deadline, and the project just isn’t coming together. You fuss, polish, tinker, and do just about everything you can to make it gel, but despite your best efforts, you just can’t seem to make any meaningful headway. So you stop. You quit for a day and get a good night’s sleep. Next morning, the thing comes together beautifully, seemingly without a hitch. Why is that?

Some months ago*, I interviewed a sleep scientist for an article in a science magazine. The doctor’s words came back to me as I read a section in Chapter 9 of The Wealthy Freelancer, entitled “Take Time To Incubate.” It’s the part of the book where authors Steve Slaunwhite, Pete Savage, and Ed Gandia point out that time away from a project—i.e., “sleeping on it”—often works wonders.

It does, and here’s why.

Our brains are compulsive digital recorders. They collect information about every single experience we have. You meet a client over coffee to hash out details for an upcoming report. While your conscious mind deals with the business at hand, your unconscious mind slavishly records everything around you: Your client’s body language. The light levels in the coffee shop where you meet. The music on the loudspeaker. The weather. Every freaking thing.

This is a wondrous ability, but you don’t need to remember everything. You just need to remember the important stuff.

“Remembering the important stuff” is called learning.

The sleep doc used this analogy. “If I teach you how to shoot baskets,” he said, “and I test you after you practice a few hours, chances are you’ll retain a certain level of skill. But if you go home and sleep, the next morning you’ll be better at it than when you finished your practice. It’s not just that time has gone by.Improvement happens when you sleep. If you don’t sleep, you don’t improve.”

Scientists think sleep has a pruning effect. As you sleep, your brain prunes unimportant memories— experiences, colors, sights, sounds, false starts, dead-end concepts—like the dead branches of a tree. Your brain decides what to discard and what to keep.

The goal of sleep is to organize your thoughts and consolidate learning.

You may bristle at the suggestion that you are still learning. But competent freelancers know that projects that push them into new territory help them grow.

The temptation as a freelancer is to ruthlessly push yourself to finish a task, even if it’s not going well, because your income is tied to how quickly you can finish up and invoice.

But you might work smarter if you consciously enlist your unconscious to do its job.

Want to consistently land high-paying projects and clients? Want to raise your income? Want to improve, work efficiently and prosper?

Go to bed.

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* This article first appeared on July 24, 2010, on a website run by the authors of the book, The Wealthy Freelancer. I’m reposting it here in an ongoing effort to collect my old posts in one place. The original blog no longer exists, but you can check out the continuing work of author Ed Gandia at High-Income Business Writing.

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Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your free ebook, go here.

Just When I Thought I was Out...They Pull Me Back In

I thought I’d be able to skate through 2014 with only one ghostwriting gig. The current ghost book is consuming a lot of my time, and I haven’t had much time for my own writing.

But just this week another interesting ghosting book popped up. I want to say no, but I shouldn’t. Who the hell am I to say no to paying work? To make it worse, it’s a fascinating nonfiction topic. The journalist in me is too easily captivated by a good story.

So right now I feel like Michael Corleone.