I told you last week that I was going to write about FREELANCING and INFLATION — which is going to take a bit of a different angle than the majority of pieces you might otherwise read about inflation (including pieces written by me).

The thing about FREELANCING and INFLATION is that freelancers have to take into account not only THEIR OWN BUDGETS, but also THEIR CLIENTS’ BUDGETS.

In other words:

With prices up by 8.5% across all consumer indices — yes, that’s right, we’ve gone from 7.9% to 8.5% — nearly everything you buy is likely to cost more.

To maintain equilibrium, you’ll need to do one or more of the following:

• Spend less

• Earn more

• Dip into savings

• Purchase on credit

In most cases, I would recommend a combination of SPEND LESS and EARN MORE — but keep in mind that your clients are also dealing with 8.5% inflation.

This means that everything your clients buy is likely to cost them more as well.

Some of those extra costs are likely to be recouped by either REDUCING THE NUMBER OF FREELANCE ASSIGNMENTS OFFERED or LOWERING FREELANCE RATES.

This means that the savvy freelancer will adjust their 2022 budget not by 8.5%, but by seventeen percent.

I mean, I’d go ahead and round that up to 20% right now. Look at your 2022 budget, and ask yourself what you would do if everything cost 10 percent more this year and you earned 10 percent less.

You can always try to earn more, of course — and I hope you do — but start by operating under the assumption that you won’t.

To maintain equilibrium, you’ll need to do one or more of the following:

• Spend less

• Save less

• Give less

• Invest less

I don’t have a specific recommendation here, except to note that spend less is precisely what the economists are hoping we’ll do. This is why interest rates are going up, btw — to make credit more expensive and incentivize us to use less of it.

But interest rates are going up for everyone, and assignment rates are only going down for freelancers.

Plan accordingly.

Here’s where I got published this week! (Also — though it’s nowhere near ready for publication yet — the BOOK DRAFT now contains 22,728 words.)

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