- 3 months ago
💼 Are you a freelancer or self-employed professional looking to take control of your finances? In this video, I share top personal finance hacks specifically tailored for freelancers in 2025 — including how to manage income, budget effectively, save consistently, and invest wisely.
Learn how I built a stable financial system while working for myself, and discover strategies that actually work in today’s economy. Whether you're in the US, UK, Canada, or Australia, these tips are relevant, practical, and designed to help you grow wealth and financial independence.
✅ Topics Covered:
Freelance income management
High-yield savings strategies
Beginner-friendly investing tips
Passive income ideas
Budgeting tools and apps
📈 Don’t forget to like, share, and drop a comment if these tips help you!
🔔 Stay tuned for more finance updates, money tips, and self-employed income strategies.
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Learn how I built a stable financial system while working for myself, and discover strategies that actually work in today’s economy. Whether you're in the US, UK, Canada, or Australia, these tips are relevant, practical, and designed to help you grow wealth and financial independence.
✅ Topics Covered:
Freelance income management
High-yield savings strategies
Beginner-friendly investing tips
Passive income ideas
Budgeting tools and apps
📈 Don’t forget to like, share, and drop a comment if these tips help you!
🔔 Stay tuned for more finance updates, money tips, and self-employed income strategies.
If you want more videos and Documentary on traveling
Please Like | Follow | Share
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TravelTranscript
00:00Hello, this is Taylor. Oh boy are we due for a personal finance update am I right guys?
00:04There have been major changes since the last strictly personal finance video that I put out like over 800 days ago
00:11I checked the main change being that I am now self-employed which is actually helpful context if you're new here
00:17Hi, I'm Taylor. I'm 26 years old formerly a full-time management consultant and creator recently turned full-time creator living in New York City
00:25And as you might be able to tell this isn't New York City
00:28I don't think I could have a more British background if I tried but I am currently traveling in London fun fact
00:33That is the hospital that Kate Middleton stayed at a few months ago not fun fact, but you know what I mean
00:38It's a fact so today
00:39We're gonna cover all of the personal finance things starting with a brief rundown of my income streams a reminder of what my personal finance strategy
00:46Was when I had a corporate job because it's important context followed by what my strategy looks like now that I'm self-employed and
00:52Finally a word on what I think of my current system and how I'd like to change it in the future
00:56Okay
00:57Starting off with my income streams to contextualize this video currently in order of magnitude my income streams come from number one
01:04brand deals or
01:05Sponsorships that I do in my YouTube videos two is YouTube ad revenue and three is affiliate marketing
01:11Which is a very tiny portion of my income piece
01:14But it's not zero and there are a couple other streams that I am so so excited for that
01:18I'm gonna touch on at the end of the video
01:19So stay tuned and to be the first ones to hear about it join my email newsletter link in description now
01:23Let's quickly cover what I used to do when I had a corporate job
01:26And I think that this is important to highlight because I actually think my old method is what you should do if you are a young
01:33Professional entering the workforce or entering the world of making money for example taking advantage of retirement accounts that your employer may set up for you
01:40Versus what I do now is not quite as straightforward because the self-employment complicates a couple things but don't worry
01:46We'll cover both so for my first few years of working in a corporate job for any dollar that came my way
01:51I sort of thought about it as like filters that it would flow through kind of like this like a
01:57Anyway, so first filter I would take care of my needs so things like paying off credit cards paying for rent for food things that I need
02:05You get it next filter prepare yourself a little dry
02:08We're gonna get into retirement accounts for a second
02:10But stay with me after my first filter of needs I would then max out my 401k retirement account that was offered by my employer and at the time
02:18I chose to put 100% of my contributions in a Roth 401k versus a traditional 401k because Roth is funded with after-tax dollars and
02:27Call me crazy
02:27But I plan to be in a higher tax bracket when I withdraw those funds many many years from now
02:32So I'd rather pay taxes on it now than later on if that makes sense and for 401ks if your employer will match your contributions
02:39I highly recommend putting in at least as much as your employer will match because that is literally free money and typical 401k
02:46Employers usually match between three to six percent of your salary. So it's a non-trivial amount
02:51I no longer have access to this which we will cover in a bit
02:53But yes, take advantage of that if you can afford to after the Roth 401k
02:57I would then max out my Roth IRA which is another type of post-tax retirement account
03:02And I still max out my Roth IRA because I can as a self-employed person, but I have to do it a little bit differently now
03:07I'll cover that in a bit. Okay last like boring filter
03:10I promise and then we'll get to the slightly more interesting filters
03:13I would then max out my HSA which is a health savings account
03:16Which I believe is the most tax-advantaged account that I know of tax-free contributions tax-free growth within the account and tax-free withdrawals
03:24If used for qualifying medical expenses, but to my knowledge, it's pretty flexible what qualifies as a medical expense within the HSA
03:32So it's pretty cool
03:32Okay slightly more exciting now after those retirement accounts and my needs came my liquid assets
03:38I would keep enough in my checking account
03:40That's what I consider liquid like easily accessible for my needs which we already covered and my wants so stuff like travel clothes
03:47Pillowcases, I don't know stuff that I want pretty unscientifically determined amount of money here
03:51But I generally kept a few months worth of expenses liquid final filter whatever was left over
03:57I would invest in my brokerage account and we'll cover my investment strategy in the next section because it really hasn't changed too much over the years
04:03So that's what I used to do when I had a corporate job and YouTube income
04:07And to reiterate if you're entering the workforce or you've been in the workforce for a bit
04:10But are still figuring some of these things out which is fair because it is super confusing
04:14I by no means have it all figured out
04:16But I do think that this method was a pretty good one that took advantage of retirement accounts and employer matching tax benefits, etc
04:23Which I would recommend doing if you can afford to set that money aside and on that point of if you can afford to
04:28I know I talked about maxing out all these accounts. I'm just one person
04:31I only have myself to take care of so I was able to set that money aside
04:35But I very much recognize that is not realistic for everyone
04:38But to the extent you can saving or investing even a little bit is better than nothing
04:42Okay, what I do now it is quite different than what I used to do
04:47I no longer really go through the same filtering method for two main reasons
04:51The first reason is that I do not have consistent income anymore
04:54When I was a consultant, I got paid every two weeks for the same exact amount without fail
04:59Now I do get a monthly check from YouTube ad revenue, so that's consistent
05:02But for my biggest income stream brand deals, it is not consistent
05:06Sometimes I'll do a few brand deals back to back and have a nice cash flow going
05:10And then other times I will go eight weeks without a brand deal paycheck
05:13And so because my cash flow is so lumpy
05:16It's not as intuitive to me for it to flow through these accounts the same way
05:19And the second reason more importantly is that I'm now self-employed
05:23As I've already said a hundred times in this video
05:25So I can't even contribute to some of the retirement accounts that I had access to before
05:28Even if I wanted to
05:29So I will walk you through what my process looks like now
05:32I'd say it's a little bit more of an art than a science these days
05:35You'll see what I mean
05:35So starting with my investments
05:37When my income was less lumpy
05:39I like that, lumpy
05:40It works, you know what I mean
05:41I would invest a pretty consistent amount on a monthly basis
05:45These days I basically decide how much to invest based on how thick my liquid assets are looking
05:49Again, more of an art than a science
05:51You know it's an art when I'm calling my liquid assets thick
05:53So in other words, when my paychecks come in and my account has a nice little cushion
05:57I will transfer a big portion of that into my brokerage account to invest
06:01And then if I go many weeks without a paycheck, I will hold off
06:03All in all though, I invest a majority of my income
06:06And leave a few months of expenses liquid the same way that I used to
06:09And what do I invest in?
06:11Pretty much as it's always been, I have 80% of my portfolio in ETFs or mutual funds
06:16That track the S&P 500
06:18For the longest time, I stuck almost entirely to VU
06:21Which is Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF
06:24But recently switched over to SWP
06:27What is it? SWPXX
06:29SWPX
06:29Which is Charles Schwab's mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500
06:32I switched over because it has a lower expense ratio of 0.02%
06:36Compared to VU's 0.03%
06:38Which is funny because just a few years prior
06:40I switched over to VU from SPY for the same reason
06:43So let me know if there's one that's even lower than SWPXX
06:45And since I just set and forget most of my investments
06:48I don't really care about being able to buy and sell throughout the trading day
06:51Which you can do with an ETF but not a mutual fund
06:53A mutual fund trades only once per day after the market closes
06:56Also as I'm talking, I realize how US-centric this video is
06:59So sorry, but I'm American
07:02And the other 20% of my portfolio is in individual equities
07:06There's nothing crazy in there, it's mainly blue chip stocks with the exception of a few
07:10Mainly tech, payment services, some cyber security, some agricultural stuff actually
07:14But that is not investment advice, I should have started with that
07:17And because I know some people will ask
07:18To this day I have never invested a single penny in cryptocurrency
07:22So while the risk profile of my portfolio is pretty safe historically speaking
07:26I am aggressive in terms of my investments being 100% in stocks versus bonds
07:31Or something a little less volatile
07:33But I'm still young so I don't really expect that to change in the foreseeable future
07:36Now when it comes time for me to make a large purchase
07:38Like a down payment on a house or you know family planning like many years in the future
07:42I will of course plan ahead and probably keep more of my assets liquid
07:46But for the most part I think I'll maintain the same kind of strategy
07:48And hopefully expand my investments to other asset classes like real estate
07:52But that's not until I leave New York so this is in the future
07:55Okay, next is my Roth IRA I'm still doing the filtering thing
07:57So maybe I do still think about it though
07:59Okay, my Roth IRA which as I mentioned earlier
08:01I still max out today as I did when I had a corporate job
08:04But I have to do it a little differently now because once you reach a certain income level
08:08You cannot contribute directly to a Roth IRA
08:11But you can do it via a backdoor method where you first contribute to a traditional IRA
08:16And then convert it roll it over to a Roth IRA
08:18I've done the backdoor method the last couple years and it's actually pretty easy
08:22Even though it sounds really complicated just google it
08:24Okay, so next unlike my Roth IRA
08:26Which I can still contribute to as someone who's self-employed
08:29I can no longer contribute to the 401k since that's a type of retirement account set up by my employers
08:34But pros and cons here because what I can now contribute to is something called a SEP IRA
08:40Which is a type of retirement account specifically designed for self-employed people and small business owners
08:46Which is pretty cool
08:46I actually just learned about it
08:47And the contribution limit is high
08:49You can contribute up to 25% of your total compensation or a max of $69,000 for this tax year
08:56Whichever is smaller again. I don't even know this type of IRA existed until the whole career change recently
09:01But it's cool that options like this exists. Yeah, not sure i'm gonna max this one out this year
09:05But we'll see
09:06I don't know how my income is gonna shake out by the end of the year
09:08So last thing on the whole SEP IRA versus employer setup 401k
09:12A lot of people in my spicy q&a poll on instagram follow me over there
09:15Asked me if I was concerned about missing out on things like the 401k match since leaving consulting
09:21I was gonna address this in my spicy q&a video, but it wasn't spicy enough to answer the question here though
09:25I really am not concerned about it
09:27I mean, of course the 401k match for example is a great perk that I took advantage of when I had access to it
09:33But you know pros and cons there are these cool types of retirement accounts that are set up for entrepreneurs that I'm now learning about and yes
09:40I have lumpy income now
09:42But the price of doing something that I love and working for myself kind of okay now
09:45I don't know if this is interesting, but I think it's important
09:48It's a couple things I now pay for as a self-employed person because everything up until now that we've discussed is kind of places
09:54Where I file my money away beginning with estimated taxes now that I am basically an independent contractor
10:00I don't have an employer to withhold money from my paychecks to set aside for taxes
10:05So I have to do that for myself now by estimating how much I'm gonna make in the full year
10:09And paying their respective taxes every single quarter and again, I know taxes kind of a dry topic
10:14But it's definitely a big part of what my personal finances look like now
10:18And so I'd be remiss to not include it at least a little bit in this video and health insurance
10:22So before where my former consulting firms would pay for my health insurance
10:27And let me tell you bcg's health insurance specifically literally could not be better and that was a perk
10:32I really appreciated but I now pay for my own
10:34I looked through the plans and found one that I think makes the most sense for me as a healthy person who really just wants one annual health
10:41Checkup annual women's health checkup
10:43Maybe a couple urgent care visits every year like a couple months ago when I had the flu which was not fun
10:48So it's a high deductible plan that will basically keep me from going bankrupt if god forbid something catastrophic happened
10:54And so circling back to the hsa that triple tax advantage account that we talked about earlier
10:59You can still contribute to this if you're self-employed if you're under a qualifying high deductible health plan
11:05I believe mine doesn't qualify, but honestly, I'd have to double check regardless
11:10I'm a little bit bearish right now on maxing out a lot of these accounts that I used to because due to my lumpy income
11:16And this being like my first year of self-employment
11:19I'm not sure how my income is going to shake out by the end of the year
11:21And so I'm being a bit more conservative
11:24I would say which actually brings me to our final section looking forward. How do I want this strategy to change?
11:30And what are some reflections on how it looks like right now?
11:32So I'm sort of treating this year as a trial year again to see how things kind of shake out before doing anything big
11:38Or honestly even before maxing out some of these accounts like I already said of course
11:42I have some idea of what I'll make
11:43I have my run rate formula in excel to calculate how much I will make by year-end based proportionally on how much I've made up until this point in the year
11:51Hence the title of this video that I put out, but that number can change pretty drastically pretty quickly in either direction
11:57I do plan for that number to be even bigger
11:59But that's because i'm an optimist and because i'm working on things to make my income less lumpy
12:04That's definitely a big goal of mine, but kind of a different topic
12:06So yeah, i'm gonna see how things go roll out a couple exciting opportunities in the near future here and then reevaluate after that
12:12And again, so you don't miss the announcement on what those exciting things are sign up for my email newsletter link in description
12:18Anyway guys as you can probably tell i'm still learning the ins and outs of all these little you know personal finance things especially as a
12:26Self-employed person so if you know any tips and tricks that i'm missing, please leave it in the comments below
12:31There are a lot of personal finance aficionados on this corner of the internet
12:35So i'd love to hear from you get a little dialogue going in the comments where we can help each other like and subscribe
12:39If you made it this far found this valuable
12:41It helps me out a lot and sign up for the email list link in description to find out the fun things very soon until next time turtle
12:49Also, I never show the behind the scenes of my setup, but this took some doing
12:55I put this white door here as a reflector. I put the chair out there because it was too dark
12:59If I sat here had to get some light on my face even still didn't have a lamp
13:02So my face was kind of dark in this video, but talk about a cool background
13:08authentic british
13:11Thanks for watching
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