Freelance Rate Skill

New freelancers price by dividing their old salary by 2,000 hours and wondering why they're broke by March. The employer was silently paying for benefits, taxes, tools, sales time, and dry spells — and now all of that lives inside the rate. This skill derives the rate backwards from target income through honest utilization, so the number arrives with its own justification attached — which is exactly what you need when a client asks why you charge it.

What This Skill Produces

• Required revenue — target income + self-employment tax premium + business overhead
• Honest billable hours — working weeks × hours × billable %, with the billable % defended
• The rate — hourly and day rate, plus the multiplier vs naive salary÷2000
• The justification narrative — the same math in client-safe words, for the "why so much?" conversation

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• Target pre-tax personal income — what they want to pay themselves, not what they hope to gross
• Business overhead — insurance, tools, accounting, coworking (default $12,000/yr, labeled)
• Weeks off — vacation + sick + admin-only weeks (default 6, labeled)
• Billable % — the honest one; 60% is a realistic default, 80%+ is a mature practice with full pipeline, 100% is a fantasy