How much do you think you are worth? How much money do you want to get paid? So, what are your overheads, both personal and commercial?
One thing that many creatives find hard to do is get paid their worth. There are two main reasons why this happens. One, their work is not recognised as worth what they believe it should be or two, they do not ask enough for their work. Both reasons can cause a creative person to fail or feel undervalued.
We can address point two more effectively than point one, so let’s see how to do it. You have to look at this dispassionately and do some detailed analysis to begin with.
To start, do you know how much money do you need each month to survive, never mind thrive? What does your rent/mortgage cost? How much do you spend on utilities such as gas, electricity, and Council tax? What other monthly costs do you incur just by standing still – insurance, healthcare? Do you own a car, what does that cost just to have it standing on the road – tax, insurance, and parking? Then you do need to eat and if you don’t have a washing machine the launderette. You need to know exactly what it costs you each month to live, including all of the above that apply to you including replacing clothing and entertainment (Netflix and/or the pub) because it can’t just be about living to work. Until you know these figures you can’t begin to understand how much you should be charging for your creative work.
So, let’s begin by listing the following for one typical month:
1. List what each of the following costs you (if it applies) and, if you share the costs with others, then just your portion of them:
Rent/mortgage, Council Tax, Household insurance, TV licence, Service Charge (if you live in a flat), Water, Electricity, Gas, Broadband, Home entertainment (such as Netflix), Phone, Car tax, Car insurance, Parking, Car maintenance, Life insurance, Cleaning (launderette/dry cleaners/home), Memberships, Minimum Credit Card payments, Loan re-payments.
2. Estimate the following, and be generous with your estimating:
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Food/drink for home, Eating out, Drinking out, Partying, Clothes, Household goods (toilet paper/washing-up liquid etc.), Travel (fuel for the car or train/bus), Any other costs you regularly incur.
Once you’ve added all that up, take that total and divide it by 21 (that’s the average number of work days in a month), you do not want to be working all day, every day. You’ll then get an idea of how much money it costs you to live and how much you’ll need to earn each work day, just to cover your living costs.
In the next blog we’ll look at what to do with this information and how to work out your self-employed working costs, and then the variables. If you are happy using Excel or any other spreadsheet package put this information into that. You can then easily update it when things change and you’ll get immediate updates on your living costs, which can feed into your work costs.
