Freelancer’s View of Insurance: Important or Just an Additional Expense?

Pursuing a fruitful freelance career begins from making a personal choice. Though success will always depend on the level of hard work, commitment and perseverance, freelancers may potentially earn as much as they want. Unfortunately, not everyone can strike a balance between professional and family life as well as various uncertainties of life. This is why freelancers need to think about securing their health and the future of their loved ones by acquiring insurance coverage.

Is Insurance Coverage Important or Just an Additional Expense?

Have you been thinking of insurance policy on the wrong perspective? A lot of people, including remote professionals and business owners, think of insurance as an additional financial burden to deal with. Just like any other consumers, freelancers feel that insurance doesn’t appear as an exciting thing to buy, though this may become highly valuable when urgent expenses come along.

While insurance is viewed as an expense, everyone should realize that it is an essential financial tool that may respond to several unforeseen circumstances including car accidents, building fire, and hospital confinement. Others may look at it as a valuable savings scheme which they could utilize for business operations, college tuition, and home purchase in the near future.

Now, if you view insurance as an asset, the quality and the contents of the coverage will become your primary considerations. That’s because this investment will include all “guaranteed promises” that will fulfill and support your ultimate dreams.

No two individual insurance policies are designed precisely alike since the cost and value of the coverage aren’t the same. What’s more important here is to choose the appropriate type of insurance you would definitely need in the future. Also, you should not disregard the reputation of the insurance company to make sure that your investment is kept protected until you reap the benefits of the contract.

Reasons Why Freelancers are Stressed

Freelance life may possibly render your financial success on top of flexible work time, career growth, and zero transport cost, whether you are working online or not. However, you can’t deny the fact that a freelance career can take over your life and ruin your personal priorities if you fail to manage stress. Stressors come in different directions and your ability to handle those matters the most.

Being stressed in your freelance life is just a common scenario. But the stress that brings you serious health complications is a different story. You probably encounter some of these reasons why you feel incredibly stressed at most of the day:

1. The Boundaries are not Clear Enough

The reality of freelancing is about keeping your clients pleased with your work even if their project goals are seemingly unrealistic. This would require you to maintain a lasting impression since you consider clients as the lifeblood of your business. So, what happens is that you are forced to deliver everything just to satisfy the needs of your clients, particularly when completing a very tight project deadline.

Remember that your goal is to maintain enough clients to keep your freelance career on track. If you allow them to believe that you can deliver results as soon as possible, then you will likely experience getting burned out. As a result, the burnout won’t stop as your list of stressors, such as remaining deadlines, client complaints, family life, and money problems continues to grow. The most effective way to counteract this inherent problem is to learn how to say “no” to some clients when deemed necessary or at least be honest if you can’t complete the tasks on time.

2. Failure to Organize Personal and Work Schedules

Unlike corporate office desk jobs, you may not have to deal with horrible bosses, but you still need to maintain an organized calendar to prevent having your business meetings and family events get entangled. You can’t avoid distractions, urgent notices or any unforeseen circumstances, but creating a good-working calendar can significantly help reduce your stress levels. It is critically important to sit down at a certain extent where you can organize your day-to-day schedules like exercising and hanging out with friends.
Installing project management software or utilizing a desk planner may seem beneficial, especially if you are working with shifting schedules or noisy kids around.

3. No Time for Play

Expect your freelance career to pull you down in stress if you fail to make room for other recreational or personal activities. Freelancing should lead you to a life that satisfies you and not to push your quality time with family away. Remember to include recreational activities such as movie watching, jogging, or bike riding in your daily routine. Your body is not meant to work non-stop, so try to find the best activity that will relieve you from stress.

4. Taking Down Too Many Projects

As mentioned earlier, you only need to sustain a good number of clients to make a decent living. If you are a beginner in the freelance world, it is easier to say “Yes” to all the demands of the client just to make a good impression. Sometimes, the primary source of motivation comes from the inner excitement and earning potential, mainly if you will handle a new project.

If you have the luxury of time and workforce, working with multiple projects is absolutely fine. You can sustain the will power at a certain point, but you can’t do it for the rest of your freelance journey. As time goes on, you will discover the projects that you are no longer interested which may result in agonizing stress or may potentially cause resentment to some clients.

As your business improves, consider trimming down the projects that you don’t want to undertake and try to specialize in a specific field instead. Project outsourcing can effectively alleviate burnouts since you only need to pay someone else to handle the administrative duties like recruitment and taxation. This would allow you to undertake the project more comfortably while improving your freelance portfolio and quality of work.

5. When You Forget to Move

A freelance job is not far different from any regular corporate office setup. You need to get yourself moving if you perform most of your workload sitting at a computer. Note that practicing a sedentary lifestyle may result in serious health issues, including heart disease, hypertension, neck problems, and obesity, thus increasing your stress levels in the process.

Also, you may experience various discomforts such as mood swings, muscle cramps, and inability to focus since you lack the necessary physical movements. So the best way to counteract this problem is to break the long sitting hours by standing up more frequently or walking around your work station for five minutes every two hours.

Why Do Freelancers Take to Many Clients?

When you start freelancing, it feels exciting to land on a new project or meet a client for the first time. The enthusiasm is there, and you feel like you are starting to build your own business network. As you work your way up in the freelance industry, you might be thinking of how many clients you should take on to grow your business a bit faster. Aside from this, you need enough clients or long-term projects to make a decent income to pay bills and other personal expenses.

Aspiring freelancers would want to build up their business portfolio, urging them to take as many clients as they can. Even long-time freelancers are trying to get many clients to gain more referrals and of course, higher earnings. Also though they are already aware of the possible health risk, many freelancers still choose to accommodate as many clients as possible due to the following reasons:

• Builds up the business portfolio for continuous progress
• Avoids getting dried up
• Feels the pressure to maintain the current cost of living
• Increases the allocation for discretionary spending and other unforeseen expenses
• Provides more opportunity to purchase other forms of investment such as real estate and insurance
• Provides opportunities for more clients and referrals, thus allowing you to make more money
• Gives you the chance to raise project rates or impose new rates among returning clients

Why Freelancers Have a Sedentary Lifestyle?

Due to the presence of enormous stress and work pressure, you will likely develop a sedentary lifestyle without noticing it at first. You may forget to eat meals on time or even move a little bit at your front desk since you are too focused on the project deadline. The temptation to take on multiple projects or desperately trying to finish the job will affect your overall well-being in various ways. You may even reach the point where physical exhaustion becomes normal.

Consistently depriving your body of necessary nutrition, quality sleep, and recreational activities will certainly drown you in deep stress. Something needs to be addressed when these apparent signs are happening to you. Remember that exhaustion can drop your immune system, thus allowing you to become vulnerable to different illnesses. So take time to exercise, give yourself enough time to rest or if possible, leave your house to unwind somewhere.

Why is it Important to Invest in Insurance?

Buying life or health insurance is one of the significant financial decisions every freelancer should make. No one knows what to expect in the near future regardless of how much you can make from freelancing today. It could cause overwhelming consequences to your loved ones who would be left behind if something terrible happened to you whether you had died of any severe illness or accident. The situation may get even worse if you happen to be the sole provider.

HOWPO is now collaborating with Troy Rojo Talaroc from AXA Philippines, an established insurance brand that helps people find a viable option for securing affordable insurance policies. Freelancers can choose among health coverage, income protection, education plans, and other worthy investments that would help them become equipped for future financial needs. Besides, if you are a freelancer right now, you should not overlook the great benefits of life insurance while you are still young and physically active. If you’re interested, send me an email, comment, message and I can hook you up with Troy whether online (zoom, skype, etc.) and offline (meet ups).

Interested? Fill up this form for me to better explain the policies and help you choose to suit your needs.

Here are some compelling reasons why acquiring an insurance policy is truly important these days:

1. Helping you Achieve your Personal Goals

Life insurance would help you materialize your long-term goals, such as purchasing a new house or planning a new business after retirement. Some policies are tied with numerous investment options which would render higher interest rates and dividends based on credit performance.

2. Securing the Welfare of your Family and your Retirement

Having life insurance could save your surviving dependents from heavy financial burdens mainly if you are the breadwinner of the family. Life insurance could provide the needed financial solution whether you need it for securing your family’s daily expenses, replacing any lost income or paying for your child’s tuition. This may also complement your retirement goals, helping your retirement savings to last as long as it can. With a life insurance policy, you can have a regular source of income in addition to retirement benefits you may receive from the government (referring to SSS and PAG-IBIG).

Since death is inevitable, purchasing life insurance also relieves your family from further financial troubles when something tragic happens to you. The least you can give to them is to secure their financial needs for the future through the type of insurance policy may matter.

3. Paying Off The Debts

Leaving your family with financial liabilities is something you don’t want to happen during your lifetime. By purchasing the right investment policy, you may be able to settle any outstanding debt including car loans, personal loans, and home loans.

As many investment experts say, life insurance is an essential tool for protection while encouraging consumers to save money in a disciplined manner. The exact need for insurance often changes at various stages of your life, which would depend on financial status, personal plans and actual needs of the dependents. If you think of insurance as an asset rather than an expense then you can help yourself make better financial decisions.