Okey dokey. This is the second part of ‘showing you your money’.
In the last post I covered the basics of starting to freelance in animation and/or storyboarding. I talked about setting up your invoices and for you Canadians, a bit about the wonder that is the GST. At the end of that I mentioned you can’t spend that GST money.
So here’s a little advice about handling the cold hard cash. Of course, you don’t have to do it this way. This is just how I did things when I started out and it worked pretty well for me. And if you’re young, you’ll thank me in your forties. 🙂
Separate your cash!
The GST you collect isn’t yours and about a third of your income isn’t yours.
“What?”
That’s right. You’re going to have to pay the tax man eventually. If you think and act like all the money you collect is yours, then you’ll be in big trouble, baby. There will be nothing worse then getting the news that you owe thousands to the government when you only have a few hundred in your bank account.
You may put off paying your taxes.
You won’t sleep at night.
You’ll get dark circles under your eyes and maybe develop a substance abuse problem.
I can’t let that happen. If you want dark circles and a substance abuse problem, just keep storyboarding. 😉
But pay your taxes! Because it will catch up with you eventually.