Found out my retainer model was shorting me by about 30%

I was going over old invoices last week and realized something weird. For the last six months I had been charging a flat monthly retainer but I never tracked how many hours I actually spent. Turns out I was working around 40 hours a month on a retainer that only covered 25 hours of my rate. I found the stat in a blog post from the Freelancers Union that said most people underprice retainers by at least 25%. Has anyone else ever run the numbers and gotten a surprise like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

sandragrant8h ago

Did you check if you were eating that time on random admin stuff or actual client work? I had the same thing happen and what saved me was setting a hard weekly cap and just not doing anything over that unless I billed extra.

rowanr884h ago

Exactly, I caught myself spending like 3 hours "organizing my inbox" last week and realized I was just avoiding actual work. It's scary how easy it is to trick yourself into thinking admin stuff counts as billable time. I finally just started tracking everything in 15 minute blocks and the truth was brutal. Now if it's not directly making money I don't touch it during my working hours, and my invoices actually match my time now.

abbyf798h ago

Honestly yes, I read this trick in a freelancer forum and it totally works.

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