Awesome post! One thing I find is really important is to charge 'properly', which at first seems like exurberant fees. My friends think I'm rolling in cash because of my 'rate' but when you outline all of this stuff up here, you can see where it all goes. I don't do much better than when I worked full time, but I have the potential to work harder and make more money. But the extra super hard work doesn't' seem worth losing the life balance (and well, the nice parts of contracting, i.e. TWO WEEK HOLIDAY, even though it really isn't).