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Comment by ryansloan | Hacker News Reader

My father (who has always been self-employed) once said "the best thing about being self-employed is that I can choose my own hours. I can work whatever 100 hours a week I want."

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My father's saying was "I can work 24 hours a day whether I want to or not". He also used to say "If you go to the bank for a loan and you say you are 'self-employed' they hear 'un-employed'"

I remember a story about a business owner (in India I think) whose employees could get loans but he could not. They were employed after all.

Surely he could have just get himself employed as a director of the company?

Been one of those entrepreneurs - Being employed as a director is not seen has employment. My employee just got loan of 2.2 million rupees to buy a vehicle (depreciating asset)and banks are not clearing my loan of 2million to buy a house (asset) when I am paying other 2million. True story.

I'm the director of my own company in the UK (freelance Web development). When I tried to get a mortgage recently they took the average of the last three years of my company accounts (net profit) as my salary equivalent. They didn't take into account the fact that the company profits have substantially increased year-on-year, and the project profits for the coming year are much higher than the average of the last three years.

So yeah, it's a lot harder to deal with banks if you're self-employed, especially as loans seem harder get these days.

I believe I like the version I've heard better. "the best thing about being self-employed is that I can choose my own hours... as long as its all of them."

Another quote along those lines:

Why work 8 hours a day for someone else for a living wage, when you can work 24 hours a day for yourself for free?

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