Modest success

As you no doubt understand if you read my blog with any regularity, I'm not a math person. So it was with much grimacing and some under-the-breath cursing that I decided to put aside my fear and loathing of math and crunch me some numbers.

I started my freelance business in June of 2007. I knew there would be no way to immediately match what I had been earning at my cubefarm job, so I determined what I spend in a typical month (utilities, groceries, car payment, mortgage, etc.) and made it my goal to at least make that make that much every month. I was . . . intermittently successful at meeting that goal. Fortunately, my husband picked up most of the slack, so with a little curtailing of "unnecessary" spending we were able to keep our house and cars, eat on a regular basis, etc.

I retained last year's goal for this year, and added a goal of making more per month than I did last year. To determine if I am meeting that goal, I compared my earnings in two ways:

1. In a straight comparison of the last six months of 2007 to the first six months of 2008, I made 8.4 percent more this year than last.
2. For an "apples to apples" comparison, I looked at what I earned from June through October 2007 versus what I earned June through October 2008. For that period of time, I made 13.5 percent more this year than last.

Not drastic increases, but it makes me feel better to know that I'm doing better this year than last. And the last two months have been the best yet, so I am hopeful that my end-of-year calculations will show even better increases.