 Hello, this is Robert Gephardt and today I want to talk to you about five ways that you can save money as a freelancer. Now if you work as a freelancer then you have a very different lifestyle from people who work in an office, right? I mean you are your own boss. You don't have someone breathing down your neck making sure you do the right thing. You also don't have to deal with all the bureaucracy, you don't have to rely on someone else for your job and this and that. You also have some insecurities, right? Because you aren't guaranteed that monthly paycheck. You have to wear many different hats. You have to do everything. You're in charge of marketing, in charge of sales, in charge of supplies, in charge of getting invoices and in charge of doing the actual work. So anyway, it's a give or take. You can set your own hours, you can set your own where you want to work but you also don't have the security, the safety of that paycheck every month and you don't have the co-workers to talk to at the water cooler, etc, etc. So this basically means that you lead a very different lifestyle from your average Joe who goes to the nine to five, right? And it also means that a lot of the things you see in terms of how to save money and how to earn more and stuff like that don't really apply to you. And a lot of things that could apply to you just never get said because there's no real market for it. Because a majority of people are still working for that nine to five for that job. So I just wanted to target people like us, freelancers, more specifically freelance translators because that's what I am. But I think freelancers in general and I want to target us, people like us and talk about ways we can save money. These are ways that I've come across and so anyway, I've got five ways here in which we as freelancers can save money. Way number one is something that I'm going to call time arbitrage. Time arbitrage basically means that since you aren't working from nine to five in an office, since you're not stuck in one place during these hours, it means that you can use these hours as you wish. So you could decide to work early in the morning or later at night and you could make certain hours during the day available. This could be for grocery shopping if you want to go grocery shopping when no one's there, i.e. any time during the week and not evenings or weekends or just for any other shopping you want to do when you have fewer people and it's a lot quicker and you can get it done and very often it's a lot cheaper. Because time arbitrage also means date arbitrage, i.e. there are certain times of the day when things are better and this applies also if you want to watch a movie you can watch a matinee rather than having to watch it in the evening. You can also get lunch specials or what are they called? They have happy hours that start many times at four or four thirty, you can take advantage of all of those but it also means that you can choose different days to do things like shopping during the week and you'll find that very often during the week there's more on stock than on weekends because on weekends you never know if something's going to be sold out if a lot of people are there. There are also a lot of discounts very often during the week because people want to attract more people. They know on weekends they'll get plenty of customers but especially with big ticket items if you're buying a car or buying a TV or something like that they really try to attract people during the week. They also might have stuff left over from the weekend so you can many times find things that are discounted that way and this is also when they restock. So anyway during the week just makes it easier because there are fewer people, you can be quicker, you have the whole place to yourself and very often it's cheaper. So that's what I mean by time arbitrage. By the way this can also mean that what you can do is you can set up your weekend to be a different day. If I set up my quote-unquote weekend to be on say Tuesday and Wednesday or something then that means that I, well first of all I can travel during those days so I can decide to go some place. Just as an example my wife and I decided to travel recently to Asheville and we were able to get a rental car very cheap we were able to get the hotel for free because I had some points but we were only able to get that rate during the week and since we just moved to Charlotte we went up to this place called Asheville up in the mountains we saw the Blue Ridge Mountains Great Smoky Mountain National Park it was great it was awesome and it was really cheap because we went during the off time and so if you're a freelancer you're able to do that. Do any traveling go during the week when no one's there they're fewer crowds and it costs a whole lot less. By the way if you decide to do this it means that you take your weekend during the week but also means you're available to work over the weekend so if you have a client that comes to you on Friday and says they need something by Monday morning you can be like yeah I can do that it might have to cost you you might be able to charge a bit more also because if they need something by Monday morning on a Friday they're pretty desperate so this will obviously depend on a case-by-case basis but still it's a pretty good deal to have if you could swing it that way the way I do it now is I'm kind of flexible I don't have a set two days that are my weekend but I leave it open for whenever is best and whenever works out best now my wife did get a job at a company so we're probably be able to do that less but we'll take it as they come right anyway the first point that's it time arbitrage which is also date arbitrage day arbitrage stuff like that take advantage of the fact that you don't have that set schedule and you can do things at times and days that you see most fit second point is country arbitrage I'm not very good at naming these but this is how I see them in my head country arbitrage is something along the same lines if you're a translator you translate from one language to the other which probably means you deal with two different countries right you like for me I deal with Italian and English and so I have clients in the States and the UK but also in in Italy and Switzerland actually the time part of Switzerland so what does this mean this means we'll say you know you I'm here in the US now so I need to spend time with my family on July 4th right and you know so we take July 4th and I am and I spend time with friends or family or whatever it might be but at the same time I know that my clients in Italy have in Italy they have a big they're big they don't celebrate July 4th but their big holidays is Ferragosto this is August 15th and I know it's a huge holiday there so if someone needs a translation done during that time again they're very desperate so first of all I'll be one of the few people who's available because everyone in Italy is off to the beach during that time in fact most of people in Italy are off to the beach the whole month of August but it also means that I'm available and sometimes I can even charge more once again because I know that the supply is so low that if people need a translation they really needed during that time so you can try to play around there and if you in fact if you do have clients who are in Europe most of Europe is shut down during August especially Southern Europe so you can use this to your advantage even if you don't have clients right now but you deal with one of the languages of Southern Europe try contacting clients or going up on the boards and the forms and the message boards and whatnot and seeing who needs a translation and making yourself available and what I do also is I let all my clients know that I am available during these holidays just so they know ahead of time if something comes up they can always contact me and I'll be the first person that comes to mind if something comes up so once again that's country arbitrage and take advantage of the fact that you have different holidays and different these can be national holidays bank holidays saint stays and or just general you know if you know that a certain country is having a huge event like a soccer event or some race car event and so you know the whole city or whole country or whatever the whole region is shut down you can make yourself available say oh I'm available by the way so you know I can still work on something if you want it so anyway that's point number two point number three as freelancers and after a while you'll see when you're first starting out by yourself you really want to save money and so a lot of us become coupon cutters right and we keep track of sales and coupons and everything when we go shopping and a big thing there is I want to let you know when you do go shopping and you find something that's say 20 25 percent off even 50 percent off I can get you a better deal in fact I can get you a hundred percent off you know how I do that don't buy the item if you go into a place to buy something and you see 25 off you really have to ask yourself would I buy this at all you know if it weren't discounted because if you're only buying it because it's 25 off then you're still spending 75 percent of that money that you wouldn't be spending otherwise right so you really have to keep this in mind and and this is a bit difficult to think in this way so what I do now when I go shopping is I have a list ahead of time grocery shopping or whatever else it might be and if something isn't on that list I don't care how much is discounted I don't buy it now over time there have been some exceptions for things that don't go bad so you know I might not have toothbrushes but maybe I know within the next couple months we'll need a new toothbrush and all the toothbrushes that we use are on discount then yeah something like that can work out but you really need to go through this in your mind if a certain tub of ice cream even one that you like a lot is on discount but you don't usually buy it you probably should not buy it because you're just spending money that you wouldn't otherwise be spending so just remember every time you see 25 discount 35 discount 75 discount remember that you could have 100 discount and so if it's not something you wanted originally you probably shouldn't buy it point number four point number four is uh something once again when you're dealing when you're a freelancer especially when you're first starting out this is for you guys first starting out chances are you're not earning very much and so it sucks not being able to earn much but having a low leveling of income also has its perks right um well first of all you pay less in income tax but i mean that's not much of an incentive i mean either way it's not an incentive you should want to earn more but take advantage of the fact while you earn less that there's certain things that can apply and more specifically i'm thinking of something called sliding fee scales sliding fee scales are something that apply i mean to many things these can be doctors and lawyers and dentists and stuff like that basically the less you earn the less you have to pay and you can ask and anyone you deal with like that if they have something like that if they have sliding fee scales and this came to mind because recently the ymca down from for our road they have a sliding fee scale you know we couldn't use that a couple years back but basically if you earn less money you pay them less for your monthly membership also when i was in switzerland they had a deal where i mean they had a deal when i was in switzerland if you got a ticket like a speeding ticket it was adjusted based on your income obviously i'm not saying that you should try to get speeding tickets while you're earning less money but you should keep track of these things and actually maybe even ask for places where you make your purchases and especially semi-official places like lawyers doctors but government agencies and government payments stuff like that see if they have something called a sliding fee scale or whatever equivalent they might have in your country and as someone who's low earning lower income maybe you can pay less for that and so you can take advantage of that and that's something you definitely want to keep in mind as a freelancer because once again you're probably earning less money and also depending on how taxes work you're also maybe tax less this obviously depends from every tax structured you know from every country and everything so don't quote me on this but you might want to look into it anyway and see if you can find these deals tax advantages and these sliding fee scales for you and that's number four number five last but not least and actually there's a bonus after number five which anyway i'll get to it number five is as a freelancer when you are earning money and you want to save money think ahead of what you want to save money on right now this can be purchases you know grocery shopping or it can be you know buying money in stock or it can be maybe for baby clothes or you know for your family for me it was travel when i first said when i first started i decided okay i want to concentrate on travel i'm interested in travel and that's what i want to do so the advantage that you have as a freelancer which doesn't seem like an advantage of first at first is that you have to buy everything yourself you know i have to buy my own laptop i have to buy these headphones i have to buy the desk that i work off of i have to buy all my supplies i have to buy you know a photocopy machine and this that and the other you're going to have to buy everything yourself which means you have a lot of expenses you know you can't go to the office and say we're out of papers and we'll get paper no you have to buy the paper yourself but a good thing about that is that you can use the same credit card for all of these so since i decided i want to travel i did some research on the best credit card for travel and basically for the hotels that i use now i've mentioned this before i think in my travel video where i traveled from italy over here to the states and i and i think i got a hotel and a flight for free and because of points and so what i do what i did and what i do still now is anytime i have expenses that are work related which is a lot of them i put them on one card which first of all makes it a lot easier during tax season because everything's on the same card but second of all it also means that i can get a whole lot of points and all of these points and you know and i decided i want to save money on travel so every time i buy something for work and you know this includes also everything online and you know anything i can do like even taxes and stuff like that if i can do it if it's work related i try to put on that card and that gives me a lot of points which then i can use for these hotels which means i can stay in hotels for free i mean very often usually whenever we're traveling we're staying in hotels for free and so it can be a great deal but you have to decide ahead of time what it is you want to spend money on you know a lot of cards have cash back a lot of cards have this benefit or that benefit do some research ahead of time figure out what it is and then use a card obviously along with using a card it doesn't mean that you just stack up debt and then you end up paying interest because you're not going to save any money if you're paying a bunch of interest on a card on a card you want to pay it off every month but you still get those points and those points are what can help you a lot along the way if you decide ahead of time what you want to save money on then they can be very helpful at least they have for me uh so that's point number five point and now i have a bonus point which actually just came to my mind because i i uh because of my earlier point point number two i think which was country arbitrage because when i was looking over my nose i saw country arbitrage actually there's something else i do once again if you're a freelancer chances are you deal with two different countries if you're a freelancer and you know maybe you maybe you know if you do spanish to german translations right it might mean that you live in germany but you're originally from spain your family's from spain so what does this mean this means that maybe once a year once every six months something you go back to spain so what i mean here by i need a new name because country arbitrage with the other point let's call it location arbitrage maybe we need better names in general but anyway let's call it location arbitrage for now this means that when you if you live in germany but you go back to spain every now and then then you should take advantage of the stuff that's cheaper in spain now this can mean groceries are going out to eat or whatever but i mean even other stuff maybe medical expenses and stuff like that this came to my mind because i do actually i don't deal with chinese translations usually but well now i am a bit just because of the agency that i'm setting up but unrelated to that my wife is taiwanese so we go back to taiwan at least once a year and when i do that's when i schedule all my dentist appointments my medical checkups etc etc because they have really good doctors and dentists there but they're a fraction of the price of here in well in the states is a mess but also of switzerland you know and switzerland's pretty expensive too and so you should take advantage of stuff like this and in fact i was watching there's this other guy in this other video that's saying he lives in something like arizona or something and he goes down to mexico for his dentist appointments you know because it's it's not that far and it's a fraction of the price if you can figure out a way to use the two countries you deal with then it can be to your benefit now maybe you don't regularly go to another country maybe you are a swedish to french translator but just because you study it in france but you live in sweden you're origin from sweden you don't go very often to france but even if you just study in france and you know you speak it well enough to be translated then you probably have friends in france and maybe there's stuff that you can purchase more cheaply in france or in the u.s or in asia or wherever might be but i mean this comes to mind because when i lived here in the u.s years ago and my family lives back in europe you know they were always ordering stuff on amazon having it sent to me and i would ship it over to them because it was cheaper even with the shipping to just order here in the states and have it sent to me and then i'd you know i'd ship it over they'd pay me back for the shipping but it was still way cheaper for them so this location arbitrage can be very good and so do some research find out what is cheaper especially once again big ticket items you know if you're looking to buy a car tv once again doctor's appointments stuff like that look into this and see if it might be worth your time and effort to you know to wait off and do those purchases when you go back to whatever other country you deal with or deal with your contacts in this other country and check with them so there you have it now those were five plus one so six ways to save money as a freelance more specifically as a freelance translator i hope you found that useful if you did feel free to leave me a thumbs up if you have other ways that you think a freelancer or a freelance translator can save money definitely let me know i'm always interested in hearing about them and you can let me know in the comments 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