Content Writing as a Career

Content Writing as a Career: Finance Tips

Choosing content writing as a career can offer both freedom and struggles. Providing high-quality content to clients is a top objective, which requires research, following best practices, and multiple rewrites. However, there is also another essential factor to consider when you've chosen content writing as a career.

Keeping your financials accurate and detailed is a must, especially if you don't want to stress when it's time to pay your tax bill. Setting financial goals, tracking your expenses, establishing a slush fund, and paying your quarterlies timely should help you attain more fiscal flexibility.

Setting Financial Goals

Becoming successful in the workplace is often more straightforward when you set financial goals you can meet. If you've chosen content writing as a career, it may help to provide a specific number for each of the three factors in this question:

What's Required to Pay Your Bills, Have Fun, and Attain Your Dreams?

Exploring these numbers can help provide the income required from your orders for a specific period. If you've got regular clients, tally up the amount of income earned from them. Then, determine the gap between this income and your goals. Are you in alignment to reach the income you need? If not, you need to pick up more clients. Completing this task should give you the lead time required to find those clients.

Tracking Expenses

Working for yourself and choosing content writing as a career places you in the self-employed tax bracket. Keeping track of your business's expenses reveals your profits and will likely save you a few bucks when you send money to the IRS. Using an expense tracking app or bookkeeping software that works in the cloud or your PC should come in handy. You may also want to outsource this task to an experienced accountant who can categorize each expense correctly. Having a CPA assist with this task also helps ensure that the correct business expenses are used when your tax forms are completed.

Establishing a Budget and Slush Account

Opening and maintaining a business checking account separate from your personal finances is imperative. Ensuring you've got enough money left in your business account to cover all your costs is also essential. However, once you've done this, it is also helpful to establish a slush fund. Creating this account is strictly for supplementing your income if it falls short of your requirements. Having funds available that you can pull out of your slush account can safeguard you if more than one client doesn't send you any work.

Pay Your Quarterlies Timely and Establish an Account for Taxes

Operating a freelance business, such as content writing, means you'll need to save enough money from your income to pay Uncle Sam yearly. Establishing an account to hold your tax funds can be a good idea that forces you to keep the funds needed. Making quarterly payments toward your tax bill should also make it easier than having to come up with all of the money when it's due. Getting assistance from an accountant who is experienced with creating tax strategies may be beneficial as well. A seasoned accountant is highly knowledgeable about current tax regulations, making this task more straightforward and efficient.

Analyzing Your Results

Knowing how much you made in profits in the last three months, six months, or year can help you understand how much money you're estimated to earn in the next period. Examining these results and improving your profits may require you to place more of your energy into the gigs that offer the best returns for your time and energy. Evaluating your client list and income sources can assist you in deciding how to prioritize and allow yourself to increase your income.

Here at Fusion CPA, we can help you with a number of these tips. Outsourcing to a CPA and utilizing our best-of-class financial services, ranging from bookkeeping and tax planning to business advisory, may prove highly valuable. Contact us today to get started.

--------------------------------

This blog article is not intended to be the rendering of legal, accounting, tax advice, or other professional services. Articles are based on current or proposed tax rules at the time they are written and older posts are not updated for tax rule changes. We expressly disclaim all liability in regard to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this blog as well as the use or interpretation of this information. Information provided on this website is not all-inclusive and such information should not be relied upon as being all-inclusive.

Talk to Fusion CPA About Reaching Your Goals