Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

You can't put yourself on salary unless the business entity is a corporation or an LLC taxed as a corporation. Even if you do payroll for yourself you still have to file a 1099 and a schedule c. For a freelancer a Corp is a bit overkill and you get taxed twice.

If he meant what he wrote he should get a job, seriously.

I love the freedom that being a freelancer gives me and I could write about the hard times but I'd still do it without a bitter aftertaste like this.

Of course everything has its good and its bad sides but this sounds like someone that is very frustrated but that has found nothing better than what he's doing.

Also I notice he's a writer, now writing code and writing books are completely different for the 'average' level. An average coder can bring in quite a bit of money if they play their cards smart (look at me ;)), but an average writer would have a very hard time to make ends meet.

Writing books is more like making music than it is to writing code. And music can be tough too, as long as you don't make it in the 'big league'.

Freelance writing is tough from a financial point of view, and that's something that you presumably know before you pick that particular poison.

I find this piece much more negative than just the facts presented, the undertone is such that I hope people do not take this as the 'average' outlook of freelancers on their work and their work environment as well as their financial situation. It is not representative as far as my experience and the free-lancers that I work with are concerned.

You can't negate the tone of that article with a single line of 'because it's awesome, duh' at the end.

I was thinking more along the lines of building a history. Open a business bank account and a personal account. Give yourself regular payments (bi-weekly / monthly) from the business account. Perhaps then you could show your statements to the bank when asking for a housing loan. You would be demonstrating that even though the income of your business is up and down, you are able to provide yourself a steady living wage and that you have reserves to smooth out the bumps. Maybe this wouldn't help though, not sure. I'm a "freelancer" myself but I have never attempted to get a loan.

It's not the first time that I hear health insurance mentioned in stories I read on Hacker News. As a person living far away from USA I'm afraid I'm not getting the situation, and they don't seem to write about this sort of stuff often on the Net - because that's the way things are, except I think they are different in different countries.

For example, here in Russia every citizen including unemployed (which I am now) and retired has health insurance. It's of the basic type, you don't actually expect to get much good out of it, but at least you won't have to pay for a visit to physician. When you get a job, you receive health insurance from your company. It will be issued by different insurance company than when you are unemployed, but unless your company cares to provide you with extra health benefits, you will get the same benefits as unemployed person. I never worked at such a company though, and I started to think that maybe I should choose as my new job a company that provides a good health insurance end exercise some of those nice health benefits. Maybe pass some thorough medical examinations for free and receive whatever treatment needed (I have some issues with my health, but nothing that I can put my finger at and it nothing too serious to warrant the bother, up to this point). When I told about this to a doctor acquaintance, she said that in her opinion it is always wiser to get a high paying job and pay in cash instead, because that's the only way you can motivate doctors to treat you[sic]. So I keep wondering: do we have the situation so very backwards? I have really few information to compare.

Where can I read up on how health insurance works in the USA? Information about other countries is also welcome as well.

Why is the option of buying health insurance for a freelancer not even considered?

the first few paragraphs are all about how much he loves his work, It sounds exactly like someone who loves what they are doing but wants to point out that it isnt all sunshine and roses for people thinking about doing the same thing.

he is obviously a very good creative writer, you probably need to read it a little less literally.

when I first seen the title I remembers pg's quote straight away "doing a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly, but a 9-5 job is like being waterboarded"