The non-joys of being self-employed and the advantages of the Euro

On July 17th I shall be "celebrating" (hardly!) the anniversary of sending out my first invoice as a self-employed translator.

The translation work is often very interesting. The financial reward is the complete reverse of interesting and the hassle involved with just about everything else is the proverbial pain in the rear quarters!

The British entrepreneur, Alan Sugar, once took on-board the British scientist, Clive Sinclair, who had been running his own business rather unsuccessfully. Sugar's comment ran along the lines that Sinclair was the sort of person who should be working in his (Sugar's) research department, not trying to run a business.

So will someone find me an Alan Sugar? The work is not a problem (though being back in IT would take preference to translating - that is really interesting!) ....

In that time I have sent out invoices to the value of approximately €10,850 (divide by 12 - €900 and a bit per month, this is not exactly Microsoft!). I have received payment to the tune of €7,480, €603 can be almost certainly written off as bad debt (getting involved with scam merchants when I first started), the rest is due, overdue, or ridiculously overdue. There is also some €600 of new work currently being completed for a German customer who loves what I send them.

Regular customers usually expect you to wait 30 or 45 or 60 days to be paid, even though the work that you send has to be of the best possible quality (I think that I achieve that 90% of the time - sometimes I drive myself too hard, work too long hours and my concentration disappears behind a dark screen of exhaustion) and delivered punctually (I rarely miss a deadline by more than an hour).

Recently even regular and previously reliable customers have started paying late to very late. Chasing them up is downright unpleasant and hardly conducive to building successful long-term relationships, but what else can you do? And I cannot afford to pay lawyers (though given my view of lawyers, who get paid tons of money basically for old rope ....).

My personal bank account is nearly permanently empty (minimum overheads monthly equal €920 - see above), approximately €2,900 of the €7,480 above has gone in medical insurance, I am working all the hours there are nearly, and but for the work being interesting ..... Generating more income, getting customers to pay up what is due when it is due? HOW????

And the fact should not be ignored that there are tax and pension rights to be sorted out. No concerns here dealing with the tax authorities incidentally - anyone from the German tax authorities reading this, you are welcome to the facts, please realise that there is no money spare at the moment though. Accountants, though, are another matter - if there is one batch of people whom I hold in even less respects than lawyers! Legalised (and very expensive) thieves. Period!

And how does the Euro come into this? My major customer is in Germany. The second most active batch of customers are in France and Belgium. After that come the occasional customers in Hungary, the Baltic States, Spain and Portugal. All get billed in Euro.

Imagine having to bill them and get paid in a separate currency and get the bank to convert what is sent. There goes 12-17% of what you have worked hard to earn in bank conversion charges before you even start. MONEY FOR DOING NOTHING? WHY SHOULD THE BANKS BE ENTITLED TO THE EFFORTS OF MY HARD WORK FOR DOING NOTHING?

And think how many people that applies to across the Euro zone - whether big business or small? It doesn't affect income and profitability? Who is kidding whom? The Euro helps cuts business costs with cross-border business transactions. Period!  When the idiot in the British press who was yesterday screaming about how foul the whole European concept is, actually thinks about that for the moment.... That said it is probably beyond his limited intellectual capacity to do so!

I am already close to giving up doing this as I cannot, despite all my efforts and love of the work, make a living from it. If I lost 17% of my income like that there is no way that I would continue (and if you want an example - I did one piece of work for a company in the US. Of the $44 I earned, $17 equivalent made it to my account by the time the bank had finished - the American translation agency sent me a cheque in US$, which explains a lot of the overheads!). All people in this situation are trying their best to keep alive as best they can, they are not providing a charitable service for banking organisations!