If you are self-employed, I have some questions for you: > What do you do? > When did you start? > How would self-employment differ from having a regular job (as in retail, for example)? > Any tips for someone who would be considering self-employment? I know very little about how jobs work outside of being employed somewhere and I wanted to learn a bit more about the prospect of working for oneself, as a comparison.
I own a Lottery Kiosk and have a few staff that work for me, though I primarily work the most. I've worked here for 7ish years and have owned it for 3. I'm not sure if this is typical of other people who are self employed, but for me everything is relatively the same as if I just worked here as an employee. I would consider it a retail job in that basically all you do is sell tickets or pay out prizes. The only main difference comes at tax time in how I file for me personally. Of course being the boss has the added benefit of being able to take time off basically whenever (which is great for being able to go see my girlfriend in Ontario) as long as there is someone to cover the shifts that I would be missing. The biggest thing when starting a business is making sure you have enough cash to keep it afloat initially. And that varies depending on what the business is, how many if any employees you need, and any other expenses. I would recommend adding another atleast 10-15% to what you initially expect the startup cost to be just for a little extra support. And keeping receipts for everything even remotely business related is great because you can write off everything at the end of the year. It's great being able to be the boss if you can and depending on the business/job it might not be that much different in regards to the actual work. There will just be some new added responsiblities and tax / paperwork stuff to do.
