Hacker News Reader

Comment by StephenConnell | Hacker News Reader

Your personal time is worth more than any number of $$$. You can't buy back your time after you've traded it for cash. Make sure you enjoy life while you have it.

Edit: My point is that freelance work income may not compare, but the income may not be the reason for moving to freelance. The op did not explain why he moved to freelance, but I can think of some great reasons to do so.

View on HN

As a senior engineer at a big corp, I feel like I have lot more free time available to me than if I were a freelancer. I don't have to worry about business details, contracts, hell, really even deadlines. In order to contract out for a comparable amount of money I think I'd have to spend a lot more time and deal with a lot more stress. Plus, you don't get paid vacation as a freelancer, whereas I get as much paid vacation as I'm apt to use.

vacations, one of the worst parts of freelancing - it's not the price of it (usually flight tickets + some cash on the spot, all manageable), but the income lost while having fun that hurts bad. combine it with some mortgage, and self-pressure to just work leaves you missing some nice experiences in life (while having some extra cash too)

Yeah, I'll be honest, I'm not the best at taking vacations. I've never used all my vacation time at any of my jobs, and have always gotten paid out handsomely for the excess upon leaving. Of course, once I actually do get out on a vacation, I inevitably enjoy it, but there's so much inertia in planning one that I do it infrequently. It really is a big hassle.

If I didn't have paid vacation days, I doubt that I'd ever take one. They'd simply be way too expensive. It's one thing to use paid vacation days, another thing entirely to give up over a week's worth of income. I don't think I could do it.

This is great advice, but not really practical with conventional American lifestyles. It's possible once you save enough and get the basics completely paid off, so that you can minimize your expenses to < 1k per month, but it's usually not an option for your average worker. I believe making it an option is a crucial social issue for our time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com