The 60 Hour Freelance Work Week

While working 60 hours at a salaried job each week seems beyond boring, diversifying one's time and one's ongoing work portfolio can lead to professional fulfillment on many levels, including by not limited to one's bank account.

I recently found out that in order to be a full-time salaried employee at my current company, I need to sign on for 50-60 hours a week. While I love my job AND the company, that's still not enough to have me sign every possible work hour away to one job.

Besides boredom, the reason to keep my 'after 40' job hours open is because some of my other opportunities pay much better than what I'm spending most of my week on. At my 40 hour per week job I make about $27 an hour right now. But I'm also taking my late evenings to work as a freelance marketing writer, with projects I'm getting paid $50 per hour for.

I'm not sure what my value is as a full-time employee versus freelance, but for some reason I feel like my $50 per hour charge as a freelancer is justified, while I could never imagine asking my freelance full-time employer for such a raise.

When it comes down to it, I'd rather make slightly less at my "day job" and use the opportunity to pitch my writing skills for extra income that ultimately covers health insurance and other things I need.

That brings about the question... how much can I actually make in one month without not sleeping and going completely insane...

Monthly Potential Income
1. $4800 -- Gig 1. 40 hours per week (on contract)
2. $400 -- Gig 2. Approx 8 hours, or 4 projects per month at $50/hr
3. $250 -- Gig 3. 10 hours of administrative Work at $25/hr
4. $400 -- Gig 4. 8 hours of research & article writing at $50/hr
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$5850 per month

Which is a lot of money. Sort of.

Minus $2340 ((40% taxes (25 % tax bracket + 15 % self-employment tax))) that comes out to a grande total of...

$3510 per month after taxes, or a net income of $42,120 per year.

That's still pretty good, I think.