Here's a look at a "one man band" in Long Island, NY. He told us, "while always questioning my income level versus other jobs or just working somewhere," his decision to be a solo-practitioner for 28 years now, "actually gives me tremendous freedoms I often do not appreciate as much as I should."

Projects:

Multi-family & commercial. No residential.

Office Situation:

I work from home and spend $0 on an office. I go to my commercial clients office as they are too busy to come to me anyway. There are some small tax deductions for my home office taken by accountant.

Earnings & Revenue:

I started my practice 28 years ago at about $60k. Now my revenue is between $140k and $160k per year with $10k-$12k in expenses (the leftover is my "salary"), but it still seems like I give it away.

Most projects are multi-year journeys to get approved and construct and the fees are spread out. So the revenue fluctuates based on project/contract stage.

My biggest financial goal is to keep doing what I am doing and charge more for it. I mostly charge hourly fees to repeat commercial customers.

Work/life balance:

Good when it’s slow and bad when it’s busy…

Debt:

$0 because I pay as I go. But I do keep at least two months expenses in my checking account.

Savings & Investments:

When working bigger projects, I try to divide fee into chunks so I can put larger amounts into an I-401k as my forced retirement savings.

Best & Worst Expenses:

Errors & Omissions (E&O) insurance is my best & worst expense. It lets me sleep better (went many years without). But it's also my biggest expense. It fluctuates with my revenue but it's about $3,500 for $160k of revenue.

Biggest Mistake:

While charging a fair hourly rate means I never lose money, I think the end result (a building) has much more value. But I keep doing it because the same clients have kept calling me for decades now.