The freelance life

So, for those of you who care to know how much suffering is involved with the freelance life, here are my numbers for the past 12 months:


 As you might NOT have guessed from this graph, I my net-worth has INCREASED during this time-frame.  Not substantially, but considering I had my worst-ever year for work, even staying flat would have been a triumph.

NB:  Mint.com doesn't handle investing income AT ALL for Canadians.  So this isn't a complete income picture.  So without dropping my pants online any further, I'll only say that my net-worth increased a few thousand dollars from October 2012 to October 2013.  Also, as October isn't yet done, I have a few more hundred dollars I expect to add to my income, and about two thousand dollars to my expenses.

Other notes: in February/March/April, I acquired a new 27" iMac, a 9TB NAS, and a bunch of new software to transition from my 2009 windows PC to mac.  Some of my business software included multiple OS usage, some didn't (requiring updates/re-purchasing).  Also, my car needed a new set of brakes adding up all in all to a world of hurt considering I was almost completely unemployed in March.  (Which however was very useful for getting properly adjusted to the workflow on my new mac)

So, back to the numbers...  Mint shows that I'm running an average shortfall of $1203 per month.  Which as I alluded to earlier (my net worth INCREASING) that I'm covering that with my trading/investing profits.

But without my rather modest capital base (which has taken years of painstaking personal/family austerity) I would be up the creek.

Do you depend on your consistent monthly cheques?  Would you be able to handle radical swings like this?  That's a question I can't answer.

Stay hungry my friends!