A new survey by Intuit QuickBooks has revealed that self-employed workers earn an average of £33,000 per year, working out to £5,000 more than the average UK salary.
The report, titled ‘Definitive Study of the Self-Employed’, surveyed 5,010 self-employed individuals and found that 66% believe themselves to be more financially secure than they were as an employee.
The poll also revealed that self-employed workers are happier than employees, with 65% citing a greater ‘life satisfaction’. A contributing factor to this could be that those who are self-employed work an average of 27 hours a week, compared to the employees’ average of 37.
The older generation of self-employed workers have it even better off, with more money and fewer hours, as the over 65s who work for themselves earn an average of £40,000 a year and work for just 21 hours a week.
The most popular reason that people chose for deciding to become their own boss was the ability to create your own schedule, cited by 77% of the survey’s respondents as the most tempting reason. Alongside this was the added flexibility that comes with working for yourself, being your own boss and the lack of workplace politics.
The number of those choosing to become self-employed has risen steadily over the last 15 years, with 4.7 million people working for themselves in March 2016, compared to 3.3 million in 2001.
Dominic Allon, vice president and managing director of Intuit Europe, commented: “People are becoming self-employed in droves.
“With more and more opportunities becoming available, all enabled by better tech and infrastructure, it’s a trend we expect to increase at pace.”
The importance of bookkeeping
If you’re one of the lucky self-employed workers who are benefitting from the higher finances than employees, you need to make sure you don’t get caught short.
Dominic Allon touches on this, as he goes on to stress the importance of self-employed workers taking control of their finances: “individuals can have the benefits of going self-employed undermined on tax deadline day when not enough has been put aside or if there’s not a clear divide between business and personal finances.”
Remembering to update your bookkeeping records weekly with all the relevant information will help you keep aside the correct amount to provide HMRC with when Self Assessment time comes around.
If you’re struggling to manage your bookkeeping, sign up for a free Pandle account, where you can easily input all your data. Pandle is built specifically for small businesses and entrepreneurs, so we keep it as simple as possible. If you have questions, give us an email and one of our friendly support staff will help you out!