A Freelancer's Guide to Not Dying Broke — Why we suck at saving for retirement.
Let's talk about the elephant in your home office: retirement savings.
The ‘Retirement in the USA: The Outlook of the Workforce - 2025’, survey from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies is out, and it’s an eye-opener.
While your traditionally employed friends have HR departments force-feeding them 401(k) plans, you're busy trying to figure out if you can expense that second monitor as a business expense.
Your emergency fund money and where to put it.
If it all goes horribly wrong and you can’t make any income for a few months. Have a plan and stash some cash.
The Roth IRA — great for W-2 freelancers, 401k and i401k holders.
The Roth IRA — With simple set-and-forget investing, it’s easy to have around $1 million in retirement.
2025 and Your Tax Rate — it’s not one rate
It’s often misunderstood how the states and feds tax us. A misconception is that once someone hits a certain income, all of their hard-earned money gets taxed at a higher rate. This is not the case.
2024 — How did our i401k do and the ‘vibecession’.
2024 — The markets, a Trump election victory, and whatever happened in your freelance industry. What did it all mean for our i401k portfolio and the goal of chill-retirement?
Retirement. Let’s call it ‘chill-tirement’ — The 4% Rule
Retirement, as a term, has such a bad vibe. I think of some oldie hobbling out of their office building with a pot plant and a gold watch. Well, it doesn’t have to be like that — Let’s talk about the 4% rule.
The Three-Fund Portfolio — It’s all we ever need in the stock market.
Three simple, super low-cost Index ETFs are all most of us ever need in the market.
The List: Tax-advantaged accounts — tax saving, wealth multipliers.
More in our series of ‘More for us, less for you IRS!’
Below is a list of the various tax-advantaged accounts we can have as freelancers. Learn the ways of the force, I mean accounts. As freelancers, investing is our ultimate side hustle.
The Stock Market. Big and Scary? Nope - It Creates Wealth In The Background.
The stock market is often widely misunderstood due to the hype in the media reporting on short-term market moves. That and the jibba-jabba of your next door neighbor or some guy in a bar. It’s the long term that matters. We need to ignore the noise.
FinCEN - Beneficial Ownership Information Report. Fines, maybe jail awaits if you don’t file it.
The Beneficiary Ownership Information Report.
Yes, you must fill out another fun form, or you could be fined and jailed. They’re not kidding around with this one; it carries civil and criminal penalties. File by January 1, 2025.
i401k investors — IRS Form 5500-EZ could cost you a $150,000 fine. EVERY YEAR.
i401k investors — IRS Form 5500-EZ could cost you a $150,000 fine. EVERY YEAR.
Vanguard exits managing i401k accounts - but we still love their ETFs and funds
Vanguard exits managing i401k accounts - but we still love their ETFs and funds. Let’s chat about what i401k provider to use.
The HSA - Health Savings Account. Another sweet tax deduction
The HSA (Health Savings Account. Make your out-of-pocket medical expenses a sweet tax deduction. The money is always yours; it’s not ‘use it or lose it.’
2023 — Another example that no one can predict the market. We invest every quarter, no matter what.
2023 goes down as a classic example of how no one can predict the economy or the stock market. The Wall Street Journal’s headline was, “What Did Wall Street Get Right About Markets This Year? Not Much”
Retirement vehicles — the i401k, SEP and IRA, what’s the difference?
I know, it’s all like some foreign language. Welcome to alphabet-soup city. These are other options that you may of heard of. Let’s chat.
Empower Financial Dashboard — one to rule them all
It’s free and shows you your whole financial picture. I love it.
Why can’t I just pick my own stocks and make the big bucks?
This is called stock picking. Investors try to pick winning companies like Apple and Telsa or some unknown startup. Here is the problem, no one who stock picks will ever beat a three-fund portfolio long term!
Investor Psychology — ignore your brain
The thing that trips investors up is their emotional response. The market isn’t the problem, our brains that evolved on the savannah are.
Revenge of the Bogleheads (that’s us!)
So it looks like a new generation of investors are catching on to our way of thinking accord to CNBC. Get rich slow.
My name is Chris Albert. I’m a freelance news magazine/documentary director of photography based in DC and I also run StudiowerksDC a commercial studio, also known as ‘the side hustle.’
Why the website? I happen to geek out on simple, sensible investing. Talking to friends and colleagues at work there was a real lack of investment and retirement knowledge. Why? Because no one teaches us. There did not seem to be an investment website dedicated to freelancers signal person businesses, so I made one.
We are going to get rich slow.