A GOOD friend Phoebe (not her real name) recently parted ways with her company after more than five years of investing her sweat and blood in it. She and many others were let go, ostensibly because the company was not turning in any profit.
In the beginning, Phoebe, like most of her colleagues, was disappointed and incensed at the turn of events. So she took a break, communed with nature, herself, and her family, and assessed the many possibilities in her future. Not long after, she took a creative entrepreneurship course, invested in herself this time instead of someone else’s private enterprise, and three months later, is now feeling fit and well to rejoin the work force.
After overcoming her fears—she is a wife and mother, after all, and has to take care of her family’s needs—Phoebe has decided to be a freelancer.
In an interview with ANC last year, Matt Barrie, chief executive officer of Freelancer.com, said the site had about 900,000 users in the Philippines. This put the Philippines in third place among countries with the most number of freelancers, just after the United States and India.
He noted that Filipinos are in-demand because they perform well in “back-office work,” such as copywriting, data entry and other areas requiring manual financial work.
No longer are Filipinos joining companies, slaving decades just to become managers, or the CEOs of other people’s firms…they are becoming their own managers or presidents of their own “enterprises,” by accepting “gigs.”
A gig is basically a work assignment one accepts to earn income, from one or many companies. It’s like an independent actor seeking jobs in TV networks or movie companies. Or an accountant accepting work to do clients’ taxes. There are people who specialize in translating web sites to different languages, and others who are experts in subtitling foreign movies in English or Filipino.
For many people with growing families, most especially, going for a project on one’s own, instead of having a company that usually has your back, can be daunting. In a gig economy, you see, there is no regularity in work, nor the wages earned. For writers, for instance, they can be writing for publications which are generous enough to pay fees right after their pieces are published—or be paid three months to one year after.
(In my case, I had the misfortune of writing for a news web site that didn’t pay me at all, despite my repeated attempts to claim for fees. The editor promised lunch to soothe any ill feelings on my end. Of course, even that lunch never materialized. As we in the biz dub it, “drawing!”)
For those who accept freelance work, one of the major drawbacks also is the lack of medical benefits. I must admit, this is what I miss the most about working full-time for a company. So what I do is pay annual premiums voluntarily for my PhilHealth membership.
PhilHealth, however, will not buy us any health exams or doctors’ checkups; it usually pays out the benefit after a patient is hospitalized. So it’s better for freelancers to secure health insurance—if you have a family—or subscribe to a health maintenance organization. HMOs cover an allowable amount of consultations with doctors, health exams/laboratory tests, and hospitalization, depending on the plan one chooses. Health is wealth, after all, and freelancers need to be in tip-top shape to accept all those work assignments.
Another drawback of being in a gig economy is paying one’s taxes or filing one’s income-tax return (ITR). A week or two before April 15, which is the annual deadline for filing one’s ITR, I seek out all the companies I work for and ask for certificates of taxes withheld from my fees. Because I can hardly afford a tax accountant, I compute for my own taxes and file my own ITR. (Being a Mac user, using the Windows-only ITR package of the Bureau of Internal Revenue makes the latter task extra challenging.)
But on the upside, generally, freelancers have never had it so good. Being one’s boss, a freelancer can pick and choose who to work for, and have a more flexible schedule. For parents, for example, this is a huge plus because they can stay at home to tend to their infants or their sick kids and fulfill their gigs.
In my case, for instance, I schedule interviews or lunches/dinners with friends on the same date, especially if the venue is in Makati/Bonifacio Global City or Manila. This saves on transportation costs—God knows using Grab can leave one destitute! Smart scheduling leaves me other days to fulfill my personal errands, or write from home, or, uhm, Netflix until sleepy time. (Although these days, I try to limit the Netflixing on weekends to push myself to get all assignments done on time.)
But the biggest requirement for those joining the gig economy is being more clever in managing one’s finances. In between assignments or paychecks, one has to be able to juggle paying the bills: the rent, the car maintenance, gas, utilities, food, and, most important, the Internet connection. Sometimes all these don’t synchronize well, and as such, one has look for bridge financing to be able to make those payments.
It can be tough in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, freelancing work can be anyone’s dream job.