FINALLY! An update to my nifty tool for freelancers and solopreneurs that helps you budget better and calculate an hourly rate you need to charge!
In this Version 2, you now also get to:
- Compare your rates with others in your industry and see what you would earn when you charged the average rate.
- Add savings for the future to your budget like regular savings and Broodfonds/Commoneasy systems, official insurances (AOV) and of course pension (whilst taking the potential tax benefits into account).
- Look at it all in a more visually pleasing way (i.e. I updated the look of it ;)).
That on top of what you already could before:
- Calculate the profit you need to make to have a net monthly income.
- Budget fixed costs to get to a revenue goal.
- Budget your hours from an infinite yearly amount to a number of working weeks and the number of billable hours to get to a minimum hourly rate you need to charge.
For more details on the exact changes and way of calculation, read on:
I got 62 responses to my questionnaire asking for people's hourly rates in the fall of 2018. That indicates what people around you are charging. You get the report when you download the Calculator to dive in and see the results!
Adding the ability to add savings for your pension to the calculation required a complete overhaul of the way to go from desired net income per month to the necessary profit. That's because your savings for your pension are deductible up till a certain amount. It's called your "Jaarruimte" which in turn depends on your profit. Below that it can all be deducted, from that point, what you save for your pension has to come from your net income (after taxes).
It is one thing that it is rather impossible (I hope to be proven wrong) to backwardly calculate, starting from a net income, the taxes you need to pay and see what your profit needed to be. That's why I didn't. I simply calculated the taxes you need to pay from a certain profit tens of times, put in in a table and programmed the Calculator to look up the results for your input. But adding something that is dependent on the outcome creates a circular reference. It works good enough now to give you a pretty good idea, but not perfectly. So, round up your needed profit with roughly €100-200 per year.
