You know what’s silly?
Being a creative freelancer, and thinking that being on top of your money and taxes is beyond your capabilities.
WELL, NO WAY, JOSE.
NAH-AH
Not in this corner of the internet.
Having a creative job doesn’t mean that you’re bound to hide under a desk and hug your knees every time that tax return deadline starts looming over your shoulder.
LET ME ASK YOU THIS…
What if I told you that not only can you easily understand how taxation works for freelancers in the UK, but you can also build a bookkeeping system that is straightforward, empowering, and anxiety-melting?
Yes, that’s all 100% true.
I will help you make friends with Self Assessment, so that you can stop feeling lost and scared of preparing your taxes and organizing your financial stuff.
Hooray!
LET ME ASK YOU THIS…
What if I told you that not only can you easily understand how taxation works for freelancers in the UK, but you can also build a bookkeeping system that is straightforward, empowering, and anxiety-melting?
Yes, that’s all 100% true.
I will help you make friends with Self Assessment, so that you can stop feeling lost and scared of preparing your taxes and organizing your financial stuff.
Hooray!
Hands up if this connects with you:
No one has ever explained to you how taxation works for freelancers, and what the hell you should be doing about it.
Or maybe you do know what you’re supposed to do, but your bookkeeping is all over the place and you avoid taking care of it until the very last minute, and then you stress-panic a few days before the submission deadline.
You are absolutely convinced that you are “bad with money” and that “math escapes you” and that “you don’t understand finance” (spoiler alert: these are all lies!)
Complicated spreadsheets and admin systems give you a headache and an impulse to scrape your eyes out of your skull.
You’ve done what you can to properly prepare and submit a Self Assessment, but you’re unsure you’ve been doing things right and you have nightmares of the Taxman coming to get you.
Did I hit a nerve there?
It’s because I know the pain. I have been teaching creative freelancers about preparing their self assessment for YEARS, and I am oh-so-ready to help you, too, and in a way that is friendly, fun, and empowering.
This is why I am over the moon excited to introduce…
A signature course designed to teach you how to understand, prepare, and submit your Self Assessment as a Freelancer, so you can melt the anxiety away from your tax return, happily submit well in advance, and wave buh-bye to a last-minute stress-fuelled submission.
MAKING FRIENDS WITH SELF ASSESSMENT IS HERE TO SHOO THE FINANCE-FEAR AWAY
I’ve been concocting this course for AGES, and I am so happy and proud to finally offer it to you, my friend.
I shine when I connect with artists and creatives and break down what can be complex finance and accounting topics into easily digestible nuggets that you can easily absorb and implement into your day-to-day practice.
The course teaches you how providing yourself with financial care is absolutely integral to your success as a creative. You can’t procrastinate being financially literate forever: the sooner you jump aboard, the sooner you’ll realise and keeping your financial books with care will uplift everything else you do in your practice.
I will go through exactly what your responsibilities are as a freelancer when it comes to preparing your tax work, and my best tips and practices to keep it organised, easy, streamlined, and stress-free.
And not only that: I will provide you with plenty of practical resources, tools, and examples that will really help you implement a smooth system from the get-go.
Here’s what you can expect out of Making Friends with Self Assessment:
- Learn about what being a freelancer in the UK means
- Mindset strategies to help you overcome limiting beliefs about money and financial care
- Understand what taxes freelancers pay in the UK, and how they are calculated
- Gain clarity on what your responsibilities are when it comes to preparing your tax return as a freelancer
- Know all about the important dates and deadlines to mark in your calendar
- Understand what Payments on Accounts are
- Learn about taxable income and profit
- Understand what counts as an allowable business expense
- Learn the do’s and don’ts of bookkeeping
- Create a simple system to track your transactions as a freelancer
- Capture, track, store, and file your invoices and receipts with ease
- Use my own transaction tracker template to record all your business transactions
Start the tax year with a yes-I-can-do-this-and-it’s-gonna-be-great attitude!
Submit your tax return MONTHS in advance and never experience the January Tax Panic again
Manage your cashflow so that you will always have some cash set aside to pay your tax bill when the time comes
Watch a screen-scare of me filling in and submitting an actual online tax return, and learn all about the not-always-clear language used in the Self Assessment online form
Get a full checklist of everything you need to do and collect before you submit your tax return
AND NOW, LET’S ADDRESS YOUR “BUT WHAT IFS”!
This is where I address the stuff you’re worrying about, and start dismantling that sh*t!
“But what if I’m super bad at maths?”
You don’t need to be good at maths to be good ad managing you finances. I swear by this. Maths actually has very little to do with keeping your books: technology (aka: a spreadsheet) will do all the math-ing you need!
What really makes the difference between an anxiety-free early submission and a sweaty panic-fuelled one is a tiny bit of organisation. And I’m not even talking about the Monica Gellar kind of organisation! You just need a simple method and a tiny bit of time every month to maintain it. That’s it!
And you can rest assured that I’ll teach you exactly what that looks like.
“But what if I’m terrible at finance stuff?”
Well, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that even if that’s true, it’s probably because you haven’t given yourself a chance.
Think about it: how can you be good at something you’ve never been taught? Exactly, you can’t. Humans are wired to fear what they don’t know. And if we fear something, how can we be good at it?!
The good news is that you are always in time to learn. And the more you learn about income, expenditure, allowable expenditure, taxation, etc, the more you will feel capable and on top of things.
But the only way to get over it, is through! If you invest in this course, you will give yourself the tools are resources to lift the fog from all these funny-sounding and vaguely abstract financial concepts, and allow yourself to step into your creative practice with a much more sound financial knowledge.
“But what if I just hire an accountant to relieve me of all the tax-related work?”
If you are able to afford an accountant every year, that is absolutely fantastic… however, it won’t save you from having to learn about bookkeeping.
An accountant won’t do everything for you. Far from it! There is actually a lot of information that you will need to prepare all by yourself, and then send to the accountant for them to review and submit.
Even if you work with an accountant, you will still need to accurately and adequately track your income and expenditure and collect all the relevant documentation and details in advance of handing everything over to them in a timely manner.
Therefore, you still need to know what you’re doing when it comes to your freelance bookkeeping and preparing for your Self Assessment.
Getting your finances in order can be life-changing
Yes, I said what I said! And I stand by it, always will.
Imagine this.
You start the financial year with a clear and simple way to track all of your income and your business expenses.
On a regular basis, you rock up at your favourite cafe, sit down with a croissant and cuppa, you open your transaction tracker, and type in your recent transactions while listening to your favourite playlist.
You’re calm and knowledgeable about how much you’ve earned and spent to date. All the information you need is right there in front of you.
You are able to estimate how much your tax bill will be based on your monthly profit. You feel reassured that that you will be able to pay it, because you know how to save for it.
You are able to submit your tax return MONTHS in advance of the deadline. This gives you plenty of time to pay the tax bill, and you can enjoy the Xmas holidays knowing that your tax work is all taken care of.
You have taken the time to learn about your financial responsibilities and you feel confident about the system that you have created. This gives you pride and a sense of empowerment.
You developed new financial skills that you can apply to your creative projects, and they make you a better artist and a better collaborator.
Finance and money are not your enemies anymore. You’ve made friends with them, and preparing for your Self Assessment is, finally, stress-free!
And now, compare that to THIS
You know that you have knowledge gaps and a non-existent system when it comes to bookkeeping and taxation, but you still do nothing about it. After all it’s still early, right? I’ve got a few months before the Seaf Assessment is due. I’ll deal with it later.
You know will have to deal with this stuff sooner or later: death and taxes, am I right? But sooner or later is not now. It can wait a bit more. (Cue the first anxiety twinge gripping at the bottom of your throat. You ignore it.)
Weeks and months pass by and you know you should start preparing the figures, but you don’t, because you just don’t want to deal with it.
Xmas time comes by, and you still have 12 months of transactions and receipts to sift through. “I’ll do it in January”, you tell yourself. You spend the holidays dreading the new year.
You have no idea what your tax bill will be. You spent all your money on Xmas gifts and celebrations, and you have very little left in your account. How the hell are you going to pay for your taxes?
January comes. You’re still procrastinating. “I’m still groggy from New Year’s Eve”, you tell yourself, “I’ll do it next weekend”.
You finally get to a stage where the anxiety of having to submit your Self Assessment is too strong to be ignored. You sit down, open your bank statements, and sift through transactions that happened over 18 months ago. What the hell was that Amazon purchase for? Can I claim it? How many days have I worked from home? Which meals can I claim? Was this invoice paid?
You rush through the process in a sweaty frenzy, unsure whether you’re doing things right, and cursing yourself for not getting organised sooner. Every year is the same! “Future you” is always angry at “past you” for leaving it all to the last minute. Ugh, January is just the worst month do do anything this important!
You submit a few days short from the deadline, and beg your clients for an early payment so that you can pay your tax bill on time. They don’t, and you don’t have enough funds to pay your bill. The deadline lapses, and you are charged another £100 for not paying on time.
“I won’t let this happen again”, you tell yourself. “Next year I’ll get my bookkeeping right from the get-go”.
And so it goes.
Even just typing all that made me sweath through my t-shirt!
Isn’t this a scenario you would want to avoid at all costs?
Don’t underestimate the power of showing up for your freelance finances.
“Later” will be “now” sooner than you can say “income tax”.
Take action NOW
to fully understand your Self Assessment,
and put in place a system that will wipe the stress away from the entire process.
Here’s exactly what you’ll get in this no-fluff course.
Module 1 – Beautiful Mind(set)
Lesson 1 – Beautiful Mind(set)
- Where you are (likely) now
- January Tax Panic ™
- Limiting beliefs about money
- The benefits of financial care
- Your mindset change
Module 2 – Income taxation in the UK
Lesson 1 – Freelancer vs Employed
- Definitions
- Differences between Freelancers and Employed
- Advantages and disadvantages of being a Freelancer
Lesson 2 – Income taxation in the UK
- What taxes we pay on our income in the UK
- NICs: what they are and how much you pay
- Income Tax: how much you pay and an example
Lesson 3 – Taxable income and Taxable profit
- Difference between income and profit
- Taxable income: definition and examples
- Taxable profit: definition and examples
Lesson 4 – Allowable expenses
- Definition
- Examples
Module 3 – Bookkeeping galore!
Lesson 1 – Important dates and payments on account
- Dates to make a note of
- Payments on Account
Lesson 2 – What you need to set up your system
- Your bookkeeping responsibilities
- Your Self Assessment checklist
- Spreadsheet vs accounting software
Lesson 3 – Your bookkeeping setup and system
- Keeping track of your transactions
- Managing your cashflow
- Do’s and Don’ts to set you up for success
MODULE 4 – The Practical Stuff
Lesson 1 – Screenshare: filling in the transaction tracker
Lesson 2 – Screenshare: submitting your return
BONUSES
- Transactions tracker
- Resource page
- Checklist
What’s the vibe in here?
Take it away, happy creatives!
Oh hey there! Let’s do a proper intro!
I am Susie. I am a creative finance person. Or… I’m a financial creative person. Basically, I am the missing link between creatives and everything finance and accounting.
I’ve worked as a finance manager and accountant in the performing arts for the best part of 10 years, and I am on a mission to help artists and creatives make friends with money.
A few fun facts about me:
A few times per year, I live in a van with my husband and my dog. We bought the van in 2022 after a few tough years of, ya know, surviving a pandemic? To us, your house on wheels symbolises slow living, being geographically free, and spending more quality time with each other and our family.
I am absolutely one of those millennials that watch feel-good shows over and over again. You name it, I can assure you I’ve seen all seasons multiple times: Friends, The Office, Parks and Recs, Superstore, Brooklyn 99, New Girl… what can I say, I am a fan of quirky comedy and love stories! Sue me. (Please don’t!)
I love having hobbies. What hobbies, you ask? Oh well, so many! So far, I’ve taken up the ukulele, cross-stitching, reading (obvs), writing, drawing on my ipad, growing plants, and annoying people with my friendship. I’d love to take up many more!
I also used to be a dancer in the VERY early days of my career. When I realised I was much more comfortable behind the scenes rather than on stage, a massive weight lifted from my shoulders, and I was finally able to pursue my true talents.
I was lucky to intern for the New York Shakespeare Festival (aka the Public Theatre) back in 2011: that’s where I knew that finance was my chosen career path!
Favourite food: pizza (obvious but 100% true). Favourite drink: coffee with a drop of honey ad a sprinkle of cacao powder.
Enroll today, not tomorrow.
Anxiety’s best friend is procrastination.
Future you will thank you!
FAQ
Lifetime. Forever. Infinity and beyond! If you enroll, you will be able to access the course at any time and indefinitely, including any future updates and bonus content I may add in years to come.
I will review the content of the course every year, and if there have been significant and relevant changes to HMRC’s guidance, I will keep it up to date. I will also add bonus content along the way, depending on student feedback and highly requested topics.
While this course is designed to provide guidance and support as you tackle your Self Assessment tax return, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not offering financial advice. I am not certified financial advisor or tax professional. The content provided in this course is for educational purposes only and should not be considered as a substitute for professional financial, tax, or legal advice. You should always consult with a qualified expert or seek guidance from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) when making important financial decisions or preparing your tax returns.
Your financial situation is unique, and the information presented in this course may not apply directly to your circumstances. I encourage you to exercise due diligence, ask questions, and seek professional assistance when necessary. Remember, you are ultimately responsible for the accuracy and completeness of your Self Assessment tax return.
Immediately: when you enroll, you will have instant access to all the lessons and contents, which you can go through at your own pace.
I believe that this course and its materials will give you a solid understanding of how to prepare your books and submit your Self Assessment, if you put in the work.
However, if you should not find this course helpful at all, and can show me you have put in the work, I will happily refund your investment in full if the request comes within 30 days of purchase.
There’s no risk for you at all. Reach out to me at hello@idlemoneyblog.com if you have any concerns about this refund policy.
This course is for freelancers in the UK who either have no experience with submitting their tax return as a Self Employed individual, or who have very little experience of it, and want to really understand how taxation works, and make sure they are following best practice.
This course is also for those who are struggling to create or maintain a proper bookkeeping system for their freelance business, and are looking for practical, actionable steps, tools, and resources to get on top of their freelance finances.
If you are seeking bespoke advice on your particular tax situation, this course won’t provide that. I will also not delve into every single aspect of the Self Assessment, such as foreign income, capital gains, property income, investments, or pensions. The course will primarily cover the guidance around income and expenses related to being a freelancer.
If after the course you still have specific questions about your own Self Assessment, please do reach out to me. Depending on what your question is, I may either help you myself, or I can direct you to a professional that can resolve your issue.
Nothing of what I will cover in the course is new information that isn’t already out there available for you to look up. However, in the course I tailored it specifically around what I know creative freelancers need to know about their financial responsibilities, and I break down what can be complex topics into small, digestible nuggets that you can immediately understand. I use practicable examples and laymans terms
Cool! You can absolutely get in touch with me on hello@idlemoneyblog.com and ask all the unanswered questions you have!
You got this far. This is meant to be!
If you’ve made all the way to last bit of this page, it means you are where you need to be.
We are vibing. I got you.
I get you and you get me: I made the perfect course for you, my friend, and you know you can count on me to help you finally get your freelance finances together and melt the Self Assessment anxiety away.
Show yourself some love, and enroll NOW to get started on your financial care journey!