It's a love/hate kinda thing

I hate money!

By that I don’t mean I ‘hate’ what money can do, because I like that. Money can buy me things, pay the mortgage and bills, enable me to travel, and give me more freedom and comfort than I would have if I didn’t have any money.

What I hate about money mostly is asking for money.

In my various salaried careers asking for money wasn’t an issue. I would go to work. Do what was expected of me. Then, almost as if by magic, every two weeks there would be a payday. There would be money that would be mine because I’d earned it. I didn’t need to ask for it. It was just automatically there. That was a pretty good deal, now that I think about it. Money in return for service. What a system.

Well, now I still need money in return for my services and talents, such as they might be. The only problem is, now I have to ask for it. I detest doing that. For whatever reason I seize up prior to submitting an invoice, especially if there hasn’t been an a priori agreed upon fee for service. Sometimes with freelance writing I have no idea what is going to be involved in a project. This is especially true of business writing, or website writing (which I do a fair amount of.) I mean, at the outset I really have little idea of how long it will take, how my skills will be put to the test, how many meetings I’ll have to have with the client, web designer, what changes I’ll have to make, how clear the client has been in his or her instructions, how nitpicky the client is, and so forth.

Right now I am on the verge of sending an invoice to a guy whose website copy I’ve just completed. I think it’s good copy. In fact, the web designer referred to it as “beautiful” material. So, now I have to go cap in hand, and with plaintive look on my face, and say, “Pay me, please.” I invariably end up feeling like Oliver Twist asking for another serving of gruel.

In this particular case the guy who hired me is a friend of long duration. I don’t like doing jobs for friends usually, mainly because they’re friends, and that is a complicating factor. At the same time I think what I have done for him is worth a pretty good rate of remuneration.

I was agonizing about this to Wendy the other evening, saying how I hated to invoice for too much, since the guy is a friend, etc.

“He’s a very successful businessman,” Wendy said. “Do you think if you sought his services he would hesitate to charge you the going rate?”

Of course he wouldn't. You don’t get to be successful by being shy. I could not argue the point.

So, therefore, trepidatiously, I will ask him for the sum my mind is comfortable with, based on the aforementioned criteria.

Hopefully he'll agree with what I ask.

Then, of course, there is the other side. What if what I submit in my invoice is much lower than he’d anticipated paying? That’d piss me off.

“I can’t believe what he invoiced me,” I can hear him saying to his wife over coffee tomorrow morning. “What a sucker,” she replies, sadly shaking her head. “No wonder he isn’t rich like we are.”