Maintaining Financial Discipline

Aaron Draplin shares his financial strategies after over a decade as a self-employed designer.

Heads up! This is a recap of an interview from our podcast, Salt of the Earth. If you like it you can subscribe to our newsletter. You can listen on iTunes or Libsyn.

Aaron Draplin runs the Draplin Design Co. and recently released Pretty Much Everything, a “mid-career survey of work, case studies, inspiration, road stories, lists, maps, how-tos, and advice.”

It took us interviewing a designer to finally dive into the financial component of working for yourself. Aaron’s early years as an employee made him acutely aware that his income wouldn’t scale with his output unless he was on his own so eventually that’s what he did. His financial strategies aren’t complicated but they require discipline. Here are a few:

• Create a lifestyle where you can live comfortably on a modest salary and treat any extra income wisely, being careful not to blindly increase your expenses.
• Your 30s are for earning. Buckle down and do it.
• Save plenty of cash for slow times.
• Pay your bills immediately.
• Feeling like you’re ahead of the game on student loan payments and actually being ahead of the game are two different things.

To get the non-listicle version of Aaron’s advice you can listen to the episode. It’s available on iTunes and Libsyn.

Thanks to Aaron Draplin and our sponsor MailChimp.

Thanks for reading! If you like this sort of thing you can subscribe to our newsletter where we write about each episode.