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DW's Freelance Project

July 14th, 2014 at 02:07 pm

DW was fully and gainfully employed until DD1 was born nearly 12 years ago. She was an agricultural communications major at MSU, and she worked in the communications/writing/PR arena. She left the world of W-2 employment when DD1 was born, and took on the full-time task of raising children.

She began her own freelance public relations business probably six or eight months after DD1 was born. She would work on her projects when the baby, then babies were sleeping, or when I was home to care for the children. Most years she earned somewhere between 8-10K in income, after expenses. In fact, it was a freelance check that catapulted us into the world of finally addressing our debt problem. She received a check for about 11K in October 2010. We were woefully past due on a hand full of bills. We also had a mountain of debt. That 11K check allowed us to get current on all of our bills, and also take a big chunk out of our highest interest credit card. In fact, looking back, it was kind of funny how it worked out. We were past due on our highest interest CC. I think it was a day or maybe two after we got the freelance check, we got a letter in the mail from that CC company. They were offering us a deal. The int. rate on the card was, I think, 32.99%. The offer was that if we paid the past due amount, which I think was around $450, the company would cut our rate to 16.99%. We mailed the check that very same day, and our int. rate was cut nearly in half.

Once we were caught up on all of our past due bills, and got that CC back to current, there was a glimmer of hope that we could finally tackle this debt monster. I started posting to the SA forums, and six months after that, I started blogging here. Many of you know a lot of the rest of the story.

However, once we had four children under our care, DW was much too busy with children, and she stopped looking for freelance work, and that 11K check in 2010 was the last of of any freelance work, until a couple months ago.

One of DW's former direct supervisors works for another company now. He has a project that is just about perfectly suited for DW. He searched her out somehow, and and talked to her about this opportunity. The job involves interviewing people in the food industry - people who grow, process, and distribute food, as well as representatives from the state department of agriculture, and university agricultural researchers and educators. Once these individuals are interviewed, she will write reports about what they said.

The job is much too big for her to handle on her own, with her other responsibilities, within the time frame that it needs to be completed. So, she recruited one of her sisters, and a friend from college to help out. But, her part will be worth 7K. All of the pieces are in place, and she began working on the project this weekend. Our boys are in summer school this week, and our girls have bible school this week. So, she'll have about three hours each morning to work on the project. I'll give her the time she needs in the evenings, and weekends. It should work out well.

Although we're not behind on bills like we were in 2010, we still have a list seemingly a mile long for this money. And, I think she has an eye on a new printer for home. It does make sense to me that she use some of the freelance money for equipment used in her freelance business.

It also makes DW happy to get into the old groove of things for a while, too.

3 Responses to “DW's Freelance Project”

  1. My English Castle Says:
    1405353964

    It's quite the task to balance freelance work with kids. Hats off to your wife.

  2. snafu Says:
    1405357089

    I too bow to DW and her willingness to take on more work. I hope she carefully monitors time and income to charge off appropriate business expenses like mileage, home 'office' space, any supplies or equipment purchases, part of telephone bill, electric etc. against income.

  3. SecretarySaving Says:
    1405366068

    Congrats Bob! That's great news.

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