44 euros per hour seems a high fee to me. As a starting freelancer, the suggested amount that Starters Magazine calculates for me as an illustration seems unfeasible for the time being. Partly that's because I work in the journalism field, which is on the low end of the fee spectrum. Idealism is my compensation.
Insurance Starters Magazine makes the calculation based on a series of assumptions about how much someone would have to earn, for example, to pay for inventory costs such as printer ink. Elsewhere in the magazine, which is published annually, they provide an overview of the insurance that a freelancer or self-employed person would need. And put together like this, I better understand how they arrive at an hourly wage of 44 euros.
In a nutshell, the insurance policies are: disability, legal assistance, business liability, freelancer liability, inventory and goods insurance and pension. Business liability insurance is a type of general liability insurance that protects the self-employed during freelance and self-employed assignments. The magazine gives, as an example of a reason to take out business liability insurance, a fallen vase or someone slipping on a recently mopped floor. An insurer assured me that the damage could amount to hundreds of thousands. So important.
Pension “The contribution does not have to be the same every month, because things do not always go well,” says the voice in the introductory video of zzppensioen.nl. He also says that the advantage of a self-employed person's pension is that the self-employed person can also use the accrued money for other purposes, such as disability. That can also be a danger: that you will eat the money before time. The site has a digital calculator that can be used to calculate how much money needs to be invested in order to have a nice pension.
Although Mirjam de Rijk's article 'Caring for tomorrow' in De Groene Amsterdammer is about pensions in more general terms, under the heading 'Mandatory pension for self-employed people?' some interesting arguments. Among other things: “Although the AOW provides a minimum subsistence, the value of the AOW has decreased significantly in recent years compared to the average living standard and purchasing power.”
Starters Magazine is brief about pension accrual: “arrange something yourself”. I heard someone say that investing is actually the best way, but that may be risky. It seems to me that people want as little risk as possible when building pensions, but that is a completely separate branch of science.
Disability The estimated premium for the magazine's disability insurance (AOV) is 300 euros per month. Swallow. But when searching, I came across prices ranging from 40 to 100 euros. The example the magazine uses is “a 34-year-old beautician who wants a benefit of 30,000 with a waiting period of three months”. I don't differ much in age, so what causes the difference? The insurer suggested that it might be because beauticians are weighed more heavily. The duration of the insurance is also important: perhaps I would have built up enough by the time I was 60. In terms of idealism perhaps.
Permanent or freelance Security remains an important issue when choosing between permanent and freelance work. I wrote about this in my previous blog and my conclusion was that I had little choice at that time: I could find work as a freelancer text translator and freelance journalist, but not as a permanent employee.
So far I'm enjoying freelancing. I mainly have three employers, which also gives me the feeling that I cannot suddenly find myself without work, unlike someone with a permanent job. People with stable jobs will object that they get benefits if they lose their job, but instinctively that puts me off: being unemployed is its own kind of pressure. Disability is an important factor. Permanent employment seems to me to be the greatest reassurance in this regard. The only argument I can make against this is that I would never do what I did before, sifting through policies and laws, as a permanent employee. I would have no idea of the regulations that protect my easy life.
Insurers My skepticism towards insurance companies comes into play here. The story goes that the first life insurance policy was taken out by the British William Gybbons and would last a year. Gybbons died on the 364th day and the insurer therefore had to pay out to the beneficiary. However, the insurer argued that a year consists of 12 months and a month consists of four weeks, and that the policy was therefore valid for 48 weeks and had already expired. Fortunately, the judge did not agree with this, but it shows the willingness of an insurer not to pay out.
If I were to find myself in such a situation, I foresee two scenarios: either they pay out or they don't pay out. If they don't pay out, I have to either hope that my idealism is sufficient compensation, or convince them in a legal way that they have to pay me out. In that case, legal expenses insurance can provide peace of mind. But what if they hide behind clauses, asterisks, hooks and eyes?
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