"No one really explains to you taxes and contracts and how to chase a client for that bill that they owe you — like, the nitty-gritty,"

Years ago I ran a conference for independent web/tech folks. I put it together because I'd been tired of going to other tech conferences and... just realizing that none of the content would have any impact on my ability to have good contracts, deal with insurance, get paid, deal with taxes, market myself, onboard new projects, etc. Figuring out how to shave off 4ms of a query, or replicate mysql, or float my divs with sass... none of that was relevant, but I still enjoyed the social aspect of conferences - the gathering of folks with similar needs, skill and problems looking to help each other.

Yeah, no one 'tells' you how to do any of these things. Tax stuff, especially starting out, doesn't need to be that complicated (but you don't necessarily know that up front).

"There's no such thing as maternity leave for freelancers"... Hint - it's really just extra overhead an employer budgets in to the price they charge for their services minus the expense of you. Budget for this stuff yourself. It's hard, especially at first, if you haven't done it before, to begin to think about this stuff, and deal with 'irregular income'. But it's possible.

"Two-thirds of them are dipping into their savings every month to make ends meet. We see that freelancers as a result are really lagging behind employees when it comes to saving for retirement,"

It's because they're undercharging, and the buyers are profiting off that arbitrage. I'm not sure there's any simple or easy way to get around this. Years ago I was part of a forum for tech folks where 'rates' were discussed, and a couple people shut down the thread (and the next one, IIRC), because they had this notion that this was "price fixing" and somehow they were playing a part ('safe harbor' sprang to mind, but... they weren't having it). Yet... everyone keeping their prices "secret" doesn't really help most people. I can see prices for auto labor on websites, but most tech folks don't put pricing (hourly or otherwise) out there. And... I get it. I understand why (I don't, but did for a while, and may again).

> Another big barrier to savings is the complexity of taxes for independent workers.

> Traditional employers contribute toward their workers' payroll taxes, but that's not the case for the self-employed, who must pay all their own Social Security and Medicare taxes. And because taxes aren't automatically deducted from their paychecks, freelancers must figure out what they owe on their own.

> "Without that, Chang says, it's hard for freelancers to know how much they can save.

Well... even when taxes are 'automatically deducted' from a paycheck, that doesn't mean it's the correct amount (which is often a moving target).

As others in the thread here mentioned, this is sort of a solved problem, especially for smaller/solo folks, by using a payroll service. It's not free, but generally for under $600 for the year, and factor in another few hundred for a CPA to prep taxes... you can sort most of this out. It's not fun, and ... yeah - hey - you're going to need to charge enough to cover these costs of doing business.

Dealing with all this gives you a whole new appreciation for anyone you may go work for in the future. I was at a client's meeting of around 15 employees, and they were discussing health insurance. Premiums were going up, and the company was covering X% of the premiums, but everyone would have to pay a bit more. The owner said "does anyone know what our actual monthly cost per insurance policy is?" There were a dozen guesses... and I was shocked as to how far off people were guessing - almost all way on the low side. At the time, the employer's cost for each health plan each month was... $580, IIRC - people were guessing $80, $120, $95, $160.

> "I almost can't have fun anymore because there's always something that I should be doing". Welcome to business. Go take a 'regular' job and have 'fun' with your 5 paid days off every 365 days. I don't mean to be negative here on that point, I just feel like many (most?) people have a very naive view of business, work and money/finances.