Changes have been coming fast and furiously for workers in the gig economy. Before the pandemic, the number of gig workers--a broad coalition that includes delivery and ride-share drivers as well as contract-based knowledge workers--was growing quickly.
Enter the pandemic. While the broader trend toward companies hiring fewer permanent employees still appears to be intact, the coronavirus crisis has changed the landscape. Ride-share driving jobs through once-booming services like Uber and Lyft disappeared almost overnight, while the number of gig jobs in the food-, grocery-, and package-delivery areas increased. The types of workers seeking these jobs have changed, too, as those who were laid-off and furloughed sought to replace their incomes, while some older workers or those with pre-existing health conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID-19 complications have stepped away.
Self-employed individuals have a completely different set of opportunities and challenges, from both a lifestyle and financial perspective, than those who work full-time for a single employer.
One of the traditional selling points for contractors is the ability to better balance work and family obligations. For some parents during the pandemic, for example, their daytime roles as at-home learning instructors have all but necessitated gig work during non-school hours. Contract work, especially in certain specialized fields such as technology, can also be lucrative financially.
At the same time, not having a steady paycheck--not to mention missing out on crucial employee benefits --can be a source of financial stress. The threat of periodic income disruptions may also make workers with non-traditional employment arrangements less likely or less able to save for long-term goals. If they know they could have a months-long disruption in their paychecks, they might be reticent to park extra funds in a retirement account that carries strictures on premature withdrawals.
But self-employed individuals can and should take steps to ensure their retirement security, just as people in conventional work arrangements should. Here are some tips to help them do so.
First Stop: Assess Insurance Coverage
Building retirement savings is important for contractors and other people in non-traditional work arrangements. But before they focus on retirement savings, such workers should first ensure that they've adequately protected themselves against shorter-term financial hardships, which can derail their plans to achieve long-term financial goals. If a self-employed person is forced to turn to unattractive forms of financing such as credit cards to defray near-term income needs, the cost of that financing is likely to swamp the long-term returns on any money earmarked for retirement. Here, lining up adequate insurance coverage is an essential first stop, especially extended healthcare and disability coverage.
Next Stop: Bulk Up Emergency/Short-Term Reserves
In addition to conducting an insurance fire drill, contract workers should also assess the adequacy of their liquid reserves before earmarking assets for retirement. The main reason to amass a so-called emergency fund is to provide cash flow in case of job loss. And lumpy income streams, as well as periodic income disruptions, are all but facts of life for contractors and other self-employed individuals. Moreover, disability coverage may be cost-prohibitive for self-employed people. All of these factors argue for self-employed workers maintaining emergency funds that are larger than the standard three to six months' worth of living expenses often prescribed by financial planners; I think closer to a year's worth of living expenses makes sense for self-employed individuals. And if taxes are not being withheld from a contractor's paycheck, that cash fund can also serve as a receptacle for monies earmarked for taxes.
Next Stop: Find a Way to Save More for Retirement
A person assiduously investing $6,000 a year in a retirement account for 40 years who enjoyed 6% growth on her money would have a little over $920,000 at the end of the period. That's nothing to sneeze at, but nor is it enough to fund retirement for many households, especially considering the effects inflation will have on purchasing power over that 40-year period.
For that reason, individual self-employed workers looking to amass significant sums for retirement need to take a look at additional receptacles for retirement savings. Rather than dumping the money into one of these accounts before the deadline each year, they should take advantage of the automatic investment features that can accompany many of these accounts, contributing fixed sums at regular intervals.
Next Stop: Invest With an Eye Toward Your Human Capital
At first blush, retirement savings for self-employed workers should be invested just like the savings for any other worker. Investors with longer time horizons to retirement can take more risks in search of higher growth, whereas those with shorter time horizons should balance risky, faster-growing investments with more-stable, slow-growth investments.
That's generally true. Yet as noted above, self-employed workers often have more volatile income streams than their counterparts who receive fixed, regular paychecks. While it's never ideal to withdraw retirement funds early, the odds are higher that self-employed workers will need to tap their accounts unexpectedly or prematurely. Thus, self-employed workers' investment portfolios should arguably be managed a bit more conservatively to reflect that possibility. That prospect also argues for self-employed individuals holding some of their retirement assets in discrete conservative holdings rather than obtaining that same conservative exposure via an all-in-one product like a target-date fund.
This article was originally written for a U.S. Audience
