You don’t have to be a master in mathematics to start any kind of online business. Hard work and smart work together ensure good earning but not good savings. If you are into some business, quite possible that you are earning good but by the end of the day only the money saved is money earned. Right? Well, you certainly will agree with me on this.
As they say, its easy to earn but very difficult to manage your finances.Unless you are an expert in financial management, you really need to focus a lot on your expenses. Schools, colleges, theoretical subjects don’t teach you the money management. Its only with practice and proper understanding that you learn the art of money management.
Talking specifically about freelance designers, they always complain of time crunch which is one main reason that they fail to keep the track of their finances. No matter how good they earn you might have heard lot many of them saying ‘I don’t understand where my hard earned money goes’.
Obviously, no body is stealing that money from them instead they are the culprit. How? No doubt they are successful in making clients happy with their immense talent but they fail in managing their finances the smart way. Here, I have listed some really smart ways out that freelance designers should know to get on the right track and do a profitable business and have handsome amount in their bank accounts.
Tips for Freelance Designers to Keep Their Finances Under Control
1. Know about your Earning
The very first tip to manage finances in the freelance web design business is to know your exact earnings. My husband has two bank accounts for online transactions. The only thing he knows is how much money he has received as he gets the SMS for each transaction but ask him about his total earnings of the month and he goes blank. This applies to all freelance designers, writers and others.
The reason they have is time crunch. Obviously, there is always shortage of time. I have heard many people saying they feel 24 hours for them are too less but excuses don’t help. If you want to earn good and save good you need to know about your earnings which is the first and the foremost step of proper finance management.
2. Keep the Track of Transactions
This tip is almost similar to the first one but differs in the sense that you should know how much is your earning and how much are the expenses. Keep the track of your transactions as online freelance web designers get paid and pay for their expenses online majority of the time. What you can do is make a document/sheet in which you note down your online transactions. This is just a minute job that can be done at the end of the day on regular basis. How difficult does that sound?
3. Compulsory Savings
As they say ‘You should always save for the rainy day’. Today, the time is good and circumstances are favorable but that doesn’t ensure that it will be same always. I bite my tongue for this. One should think positive but be prepared for the worst. So, it is always a good and suggestive idea to ensure compulsory savings. One idea that I feel works is that soon as you get payment for any project make sure you take out some amount and put it in the account that you are sure you don’t use much.
The best would be don’t get the Internet facility, mobile facility or even Debit card of that bank account. You won’t ever feel like standing in the long queue to withdraw the money so the money in this account is kind of a compulsory saving. If you think you will save by the end of the month I assure you will be repenting. It is always good to take out the savings first and then spend the rest.
4. Invest in Saving Schemes
This tip again is similar to the proceeding one that asks for the forced savings. There are lot many saving schemes that let you save a good deal. Keep yourself updated with the latest saving schemes. You don’t always have to make long term investments go for short term investments too. You never know when the need of hard cash arises.
5. Control your Expenses/ Save Down
This is directly related to finance management. From the very childhood days we are told by our parents that we should not spend vaguely instead control the expenses. If you already have something what’s the point buying the same thing again until and unless you can’t live without it. It is always wise not just for freelance web designers instead each one of us to have a good control on the expenses.
6.Maintain the Balance between needs wants
I am sure you all know the difference between needs and wants. Needs is the word that is used for essential things that you should own and wants I tell you if you start making a list of what you want or desire to own the list will go endless. Needs can’t wait but wants can and can be cut down. Make a list of what you desire and then put a cross in front of the things you can do without. You can’t ignore the needs but definitely you can shorten the list of wants and spend accordingly.
7. Avoid the EMI Systems
Personally, I hate the EMI system as you get bound each month. You have no option than to keep that part of your earnings that is decided in the beginning when you get a thing on monthly EMI schemes. There are innumerable schemes that tempt us to go for that EMI thing but I would any day suggest you to keep away from the EMI schemes. Its always good to buy things on cash.
If you know your needs and wants as listed in the tip above you surely won’t want to buy such things that take the toll on your monthly income with the heavy interests levied upon you.
8. Compare the Prices
In today’s high-tech era where you have Internet to show you hell lot of options and give you the choice of comparing the prices why not avail the opportunity. Surely, many of you out there might be practicing this tip but if you don’t I would suggest you to start it today.
All you web designers out there know the temptation of buying new themes, fonts, hosting and many more similar things for your work but it is highly suggestive to firstly choose what you are planning to buy for particular project or for any other purpose then look for the same elsewhere and compare the price. You never know you might come across a pretty good deal.
9. Optimum use of Freebies
While handling any kind of project you might come across something for which you would need tools or something similar then try not to go for paid services as hell lot of freebies are available today. Just search for a tool and you will get immense range of similar stuff. Freebies are not bad! Infact you get vast range of similar things for free which you might be using as paid services till now.
Remember the article which we came up with last month- Freelance Web Design Business : Do You Really Need An Office? In this article I listed the points in which I mentioned few cool tools :
ScanR, Pop fax, RingCentral Fax, TrustFax and FaxFreedom for sending and receiving fax online.
Skype, Google + hangouts to hold meetings
Paypal Invoices, Zoho Invoices invoicing softwares for preparing invoices.
10. Why hire a Charted Accountant?
Obviously, in the initial stages of your web design freelance business you can opt for online tools for filing your tax returns if you have a good know-how of accounting. See, its definitely bit time consuming but at the time when your business is not getting you too many earnings you can definitely cut down on this and learn how to file an ITR through online tools available.
11. Say No to Online Shopping
In today’s’ time where technology is ruling the world we tend to get tempted to online shopping as this ensures no fuss of getting ready, driving and going to the store to buy something. Online shopping has become the trend of the day but then we tend to spend a lot on online shopping which can be called splurge spending. Avoid it as much as you can!
We have come up with this list for freelance web designers but then this is not specific list (leaving few points) infact, its more of general as these are the key tips for everyone. Follow these tips and keep practicing them slowly these will become habits and you will certainly be able to save a great deal.
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