Full-time Jobs Vs. Freelancing — Is A Switch Really Worth It?

It’s a nice, rainy Monday morning. You wake up at 10 am, make a nice cup of coffee, and sip on it slowly, watching the rain. You do not have to worry about getting to work on time, you do not have to worry about the crazy traffic, no annoying meetings. As the day progresses, you open your laptop and continue working on the project you have taken upon a Freelance basis.

Is Freelancing worth it? You decide.

Often, being a Freelancer is thought of as something that pocket-money-seeking college kids do to make some extra bucks. However, as we have seen in earlier articles, being on your own opens up vistas where there is little or no limit to how autonomous you can be, and how much you can earn! Apart from these, however, there is yet another important point to consider — you become a Subject Matter Expert. Being a Freelancer means that you have to do a lot of research — after all, you are on your own! As time goes by, chances are you would notice that you have become an expert in the field that you freelance in. You are constantly upskilling and that is a very valuable asset to have! Eventually, you could project yourself out there not just as a Freelancer, but also as an expert consultant. Your options for personal, vocational and financial growth are phenomenal!

Is the switch from Full-Time jobs to Freelancing really worth it?

We are not going to answer that for you. Instead, we will present to you a set of factors to consider. Go through each, and decide for yourself how you would like to answer this question.

Risk factor:

Both paths have a risk factor attached. In a Full-time job, you are secure in the sense that you will always have a revenue-generating career for you. Your work is fixed, you know what you are going to do the next day, and things are quite sorted that way. In fact, even if you do not have much to do, you do not really have to worry at all!

As a freelancer, you have no binding contract to give you the same stability as in a Full-time job. Every day could be different, and you more or less have to set things up for yourself. However, you must keep in mind that Full-time jobs always have the risk of layoffs, losses to companies, pay-cuts etc., and you can never know when one of these hits you. As a Freelancer, your projects are your projects and they cannot be taken away from you

Stability of income:

Similar to the previous point, one is a steady, constant source of income, but the other is more volatile.
However, as a Freelancer, there is no limit to how much you could make each month!

Security:

Full-time jobs may give you different sorts of insurances. Of course, nothing stops you from taking one of your own, which you can do even as a Freelancer. In fact, taking your own insurance may even often be a better option — here’s why!

Besides, there are contracts, legalities, etc that safeguard your interests as a full-timer. What is lesser-known, however, is that you can have genuine, lawyer-vetted contracts as a Freelancer too in order to safeguard yourself! In fact, it is always advisable to do so in order to protect your interests — and there are a lot of cases where clients have duped freelancers. We shall take a look at these challenges and the solutions in future blog-posts.

Recession:

During financial crises, full-timers are always afraid the most as they can never know when they will be given the boot. In fact, there are thousands of cases where experienced employees in high positions were fired without a second-thought during a crisis. So much for all the hard-work! This is one area where Freelancing really wins over Full-timing — it may be hard for you to build a client-base, but once you do, you can always retain them. Remember, that hiring freelance service can always prove to be more economical for companies than hiring full-timers on their payroll.

Both options have their benefits and limitations. As a freelancer, it is easy to think that you are alone and that you have no way to deal with the challenges you would face. The good news, however, is that the few limitations that we illustrated can be effectively dealt with, thereby not only cushioning you from the impact if things go south, but actually helping you to completely steer away from such unwanted situations!