CART Problem Solving Series
Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV
CART PROBLEM: Nerves can make it harder to pass steno tests
Like many of my steno brethren, I'm signed up to take a National Court Reporters Association Certification Test this Saturday. I've already passed the only test for CART providers (the CCP, which is five minutes of dictation at 180 words per minute at 96% realtime accuracy -- a very low bar to clear, considering that in my daily CART work I strive for at least 200 to 220 words per minute at 99.9% accuracy. To put that in perspective, the average paragraph is 100 words long, so a 96% accuracy rating means 4 errors per paragraph, whereas a 99.9% accuracy rating is one error every 10 paragraphs.) I also hold CBC and CRR certification, but the CBC is just a written test once you've passed your CCP, and the CRR is granted automatically when a stenographer holds either the CBC or CCP plus the RPR, which is a non-realtime test (after the five minute take, testers are given an hour to clean up the transcript) at speeds ranging between 180 to 225 words per minute. For more information about NCRA certifications, check out my FAQ.
I spoke a little bit about my experience with steno testing in my article How I Got Out of Steno School. In the fine print at the bottom of that article, I mention that I began my apprenticeship as a CART provider, subcontracting under an experienced provider, in 2007, while I didn't pass the CCP until 2009. Why? Well, a number of reasons. First, the CCP test is given only twice a year. Secondly, I tend to have terrible test nerves that fortunately have never kicked in at an actual CART job; they seem to be exclusively bound up with the test-taking process, for which I have to say I'm grateful. Beats the alternative by a mile, at least. So on the first two CCP tests I took, I crashed and burned out of sheer nerves. The third one I'm pretty sure I passed, but I was so light-headed at the thought that I'd done it I didn't follow one of the formatting rules and failed on a technicality. The fourth one I finally passed officially, and then I decided to go for the next step up. Unfortunately the NCRA only offers one level of CART exams, so I had to set my sights on the court reporting exams. This was challenging, because I've never done court reporting, so I don't have any brief forms for common phrases like "to the best of your recollection" or "the preponderance of the evidence". They're so rarely encountered in my academic work that when they come up at all I just write them out.
I passed the RPR, the prerequisite for the RMR (currently the hardest skills test offered by the NCRA) on my first try; it was substantially easier than even the quite easy CCP, as I'd expected. The RMR has proven to be a tougher nut to crack. The 200 literary was a snap; I passed it on the first go with my eyes closed. (Actually, I recommend taking steno tests with your eyes closed. It cuts down on distractions.) The 240 Jury Charge and 260 Q&A have still stymied me up to this point, but I'm hoping to nab at least one of them (most likely the 240 Jury Charge) this weekend. The thing is, I have the speed. I'll be flying along at 240 WPM, note-perfect, easy as anything, and then all of a sudden my fingers will make a slight stumble, I'll misstroke a word, and everything derails. See, I'm a realtime writer by training and by inclination, and it goes against all my well-honed CART provider training to leave a misstroke on the screen. Whenever I see a wrong word during my day job, my top priority is to fix it so that the error doesn't confuse my clients. They should never have to read through my sloppy mistakes. If necessary, I'll cut out a non-essential word -- like "y'know" -- in order to make up time after fixing the error. My ultimate goal is 100% verbatim accuracy, but if the choice comes down to putting down a steno stroke (no matter how incorrectly it translates) for every single word in the transcript versus making my realtime feed as readable as possible, readability wins, no contest.
So it's tough for me to try to bend my brain back into steno school mode, where all that matters is whether I can read through the slop during the transcription phase of the test, where I can leave out punctuation willy-nilly, knowing that I'll put it in later (an abomination for any self-respecting CART provider), and of course the ever-present threat of test nerves. Why should it be so much harder to recover from an error gracefully during a test than it is during an actual CART job? For one reason, test dictation is highly unnatural. Every word is spoken at precisely even intervals, like bullets out of a machine gun. Fall a beat behind and you've got to write precisely twice as fast to get back on top of the word without dropping anything. Actual speech isn't like that. Sometimes people put on bursts of speed where they're talking at 280 words per minute, but then they'll take a short pause to arrange their notes or take a sip of water, and I'll use those few seconds to write out the 8-to-10-word buffer I always keep in my verbal memory. When people speak, they slow down for emphasis, speed up when they get excited, slow down when they're thinking, speed up when they're reading, and it becomes this push-and-pull experience, like riding on a camel -- coasting through the fast sections and catching your breath on the slow ones. Steno tests, on the other hand, are like the mechanical rabbit at a dog track. You've got no choice but to sprint at top speed for the whole five minutes, with absolutely no room for variation in your pace.
I've been practicing RMR mp3s and gradually helping myself learn how to recover from errors without correcting them or getting thrown off my pace. A great web-based app called Beeminder has kept me honest about my practice sessions each day. The largest part of all this just consists of convincing myself and my muscle memory that I actually do have the speed for this stuff. When I'm able to relax my fingers and just stroke every word loosely and naturally, it feels remarkably slow, and I get it all down no problem. It's only when I make that first mistake and start tensing up, pounding the keys and flailing my arms like a T-Rex, that the audio suddenly feels like it's been flipped to double speed. There are just three vital things to remember: Keep writing, keep breathing, and don't look back.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
CART Problem Solving: Summer
CART Problem Solving Series
Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV
CART PROBLEM: CART work is harder to find in summer than in the rest of the year.
Most full-time CART providers work in universities, which tends to be highly seasonal work. Academic CART work is great because it means steady weekly hours over the course of a semester, but when the semester is over and the summer begins, it can be tricky to fill the gap until the school year starts up again in the fall. There's occasionally some conference captioning to be had, but it's hard to keep a roster of conference captioning clients on deck, since so many opportunities have to be turned down while the school year is busiest. There's also the lucky break of getting summer classes to caption, which I'm happy to say is going to be my solution to the problem this year. I just got word that my medical student passed her classes and will be passing on to her second semester. Unlike most universities, medical schools tend to run year-round, so even though my onsite work has dropped off drastically (I'll have only one weekly onsite class), I'll have plenty of work to keep me busy, which is a real treat. In past years it hasn't been so easy, and I have no guarantee of what next summer will bring, but I'll definitely enjoy it while it lasts. When steady summer academic work is thin on the ground, what are the potential alternatives? Here's a couple I can think of:
* Get daily remote work (usually a mix of academic CART and employee CART, with occasional public meetings thrown in) from a big national company. These jobs are usually scheduled only a day or so in advance and there's a lot of competition for them, so you've got to be glued to your computer on Monday if you want to schedule anything for Tuesday. Even so you'll usually have a few false starts before getting any assignments. These sorts of jobs can be good if you live somewhere with a relatively low cost of living, since rates for remote work and onsite work might be close to par even with the national firm's cut off the top, but if you live somewhere expensive like New York City, you'll be working at a significant discount. The jobs are also usually fairly short -- an hour or two per day, typically -- and the audio quality is not always of the best. But even an hour here and an hour there is a lot better than nothing, and at least there's always a nice variety of work. The biggest disadvantage to relying on this sort of work is that you always feel like you're hustling. You spend a lot of time camping out at your computer waiting for jobs to come in, and you can't plan out your schedule each week, since it changes from day to day.
* Get daily offline transcription work. This pays much less than remote CART work, but it has the advantage of flexible scheduling; you can get it in the morning, go for an afternoon walk in the park, and turn it in that evening, unlike the remote work, which has to be done at the particular hour appointed by the firm. Still, it takes an awful lot of transcription work to make ends meet, and again the audio quality can sometimes be a little dodgy.
* Do depositions. I think this is the option preferred by most of my colleagues, but I've personally never done a deposition, so I wouldn't even know where to start. I'm not a notary public and I've never prepared a legal transcript, so if you need advice on the details of this one, I'm not really the one to ask.
* Do quick-turnaround sports transcriptions. One of my colleagues does this sort of work, going around to various games and transcribing post-game interviews with athletes for journalists. I know nothing about sports, so this is definitely not the job for me, but it sounds like a fun summer interlude for people who are into that sort of thing.
* Live off savings. One the one hand, you get lots of free time to go out in the sunshine and enjoy the summer. On the other hand, watching that bank balance drip down day by day with nothing to fill it back up until September can be a pretty unnerving feeling. Still, if you plan ahead well enough and you've got a fairly solid margin for error (estimated taxes, unexpected expenses, overbudget vacations, late checks in the beginning of the school year), you'll be sitting pretty. I know a few CART providers who go this route, and while I don't think I'll be planning to kick back all summer any time soon, I do intend to take a few weeks of unpaid vacation this summer to see my brother in Seattle and my parents in Montana, which will definitely be a nice respite from captioning medical school.
* Mix and match. A combination of any or all of the above. A little here, a little there, and maybe some other paying piecework to spackle in the gaps. Anything I missed? What do you do?
Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV
CART PROBLEM: CART work is harder to find in summer than in the rest of the year.
Most full-time CART providers work in universities, which tends to be highly seasonal work. Academic CART work is great because it means steady weekly hours over the course of a semester, but when the semester is over and the summer begins, it can be tricky to fill the gap until the school year starts up again in the fall. There's occasionally some conference captioning to be had, but it's hard to keep a roster of conference captioning clients on deck, since so many opportunities have to be turned down while the school year is busiest. There's also the lucky break of getting summer classes to caption, which I'm happy to say is going to be my solution to the problem this year. I just got word that my medical student passed her classes and will be passing on to her second semester. Unlike most universities, medical schools tend to run year-round, so even though my onsite work has dropped off drastically (I'll have only one weekly onsite class), I'll have plenty of work to keep me busy, which is a real treat. In past years it hasn't been so easy, and I have no guarantee of what next summer will bring, but I'll definitely enjoy it while it lasts. When steady summer academic work is thin on the ground, what are the potential alternatives? Here's a couple I can think of:
* Get daily remote work (usually a mix of academic CART and employee CART, with occasional public meetings thrown in) from a big national company. These jobs are usually scheduled only a day or so in advance and there's a lot of competition for them, so you've got to be glued to your computer on Monday if you want to schedule anything for Tuesday. Even so you'll usually have a few false starts before getting any assignments. These sorts of jobs can be good if you live somewhere with a relatively low cost of living, since rates for remote work and onsite work might be close to par even with the national firm's cut off the top, but if you live somewhere expensive like New York City, you'll be working at a significant discount. The jobs are also usually fairly short -- an hour or two per day, typically -- and the audio quality is not always of the best. But even an hour here and an hour there is a lot better than nothing, and at least there's always a nice variety of work. The biggest disadvantage to relying on this sort of work is that you always feel like you're hustling. You spend a lot of time camping out at your computer waiting for jobs to come in, and you can't plan out your schedule each week, since it changes from day to day.
* Get daily offline transcription work. This pays much less than remote CART work, but it has the advantage of flexible scheduling; you can get it in the morning, go for an afternoon walk in the park, and turn it in that evening, unlike the remote work, which has to be done at the particular hour appointed by the firm. Still, it takes an awful lot of transcription work to make ends meet, and again the audio quality can sometimes be a little dodgy.
* Do depositions. I think this is the option preferred by most of my colleagues, but I've personally never done a deposition, so I wouldn't even know where to start. I'm not a notary public and I've never prepared a legal transcript, so if you need advice on the details of this one, I'm not really the one to ask.
* Do quick-turnaround sports transcriptions. One of my colleagues does this sort of work, going around to various games and transcribing post-game interviews with athletes for journalists. I know nothing about sports, so this is definitely not the job for me, but it sounds like a fun summer interlude for people who are into that sort of thing.
* Live off savings. One the one hand, you get lots of free time to go out in the sunshine and enjoy the summer. On the other hand, watching that bank balance drip down day by day with nothing to fill it back up until September can be a pretty unnerving feeling. Still, if you plan ahead well enough and you've got a fairly solid margin for error (estimated taxes, unexpected expenses, overbudget vacations, late checks in the beginning of the school year), you'll be sitting pretty. I know a few CART providers who go this route, and while I don't think I'll be planning to kick back all summer any time soon, I do intend to take a few weeks of unpaid vacation this summer to see my brother in Seattle and my parents in Montana, which will definitely be a nice respite from captioning medical school.
* Mix and match. A combination of any or all of the above. A little here, a little there, and maybe some other paying piecework to spackle in the gaps. Anything I missed? What do you do?
Monday, April 16, 2012
CART Problem Solving: Lag
CART Problem Solving Series
Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV
CART PROBLEM: There's too much delay between when a word is written and when it appears onscreen.
If you read The Plover Blog, you'll have seen today's post about the updated Windows version. This means, among many other exciting things, that I can use Plover as a monitoring system for my steno output when my clients are sitting too far away to read comfortably from their screens. Unlike systems like StreamText (which charge per minute) and Bridge (which, in my experience, are unreliable and prone to freezing the entire connection -- client computer and monitoring computer alike), Plover runs on a completely separate connection that has no effect on my client's connection. I can turn it off and on with impunity and never affect what my client views on their screen. This is a big deal. Plover's still not quite at the stage where it can completely take over from Eclipse, my proprietary steno software, but it's definitely advanced enough to be very useful as a monitoring system. One of its best features is that unlike all the other steno software on the market, it has a length-based stroke buffer rather than a time-based stroke buffer, so there's absolutely no lag between when I write a word and when it appears in its active window.
Proprietary steno software is always written with court reporters in mind, and CART functionality tends to be put in as an afterthought. Lawyers don't care if there's a 1.5 second delay between when something is said and when it appears on the screen, and sometimes court reporters are grateful for the time difference between what they see on their screen with pending translation display turned on (though they still have to read through lots of ugly metacharacters) and what the lawyers see on their realtime screens, since it allows them to correct any errors they might have made before the lawyers can spot them. But CART is a very different business. In order for CART to be truly useful to our clients, the text output has to be as smooth and instantaneous as possible. There's inevitably going to be some delay built in; it takes time for the provider to hear and write the words at one end, and it takes time for the client to read and comprehend the words on the other end. But even a small additional delay added on can mean unnecessary frustration and embarrassment. When a professor asks one of my clients a question and they pause to let the words appear on the screen, each tiny fraction of a second can diminish the professor's estimation of my client's intelligence, competence, or attentiveness. It's not rational and it's not fair, but it's a fact, and I think it's important to minimize it as much as humanly possible.
Since I can't yet use Plover in all my daily work, what do I do? I certainly don't want to make them read through the metacharacters. So I turn pending translation display off, and at every pause in speech, no matter how tiny, I invoke the {FLUSH} command, which I write "TPHR-RB". This manually dumps the buffer and avoids the 1.5 second delay. I just looked at my dictionary statistics, and it tells me that I've written {FLUSH} over 1.1 million times and counting. 1.1 million wasted keystrokes. (Sometimes instead of {FLUSH} I'll write STPH-B instead, which roughly translates to "press the right arrow key" and accomplishes the same thing. I've written that about 105,000 times.) It's so annoying that I've got to slam on the flush stroke pretty much every sentence I write, but it's the only way to give my clients truly instant text output. I've asked the developers of Eclipse if they can include a pending translation display without the messy markup and line jumping, but they've told me it's impossible. I've just got to keep working on making Plover completely functional, and then I'll be able to finally throw away that silly superfluous flush command for good.
Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV
CART PROBLEM: There's too much delay between when a word is written and when it appears onscreen.
If you read The Plover Blog, you'll have seen today's post about the updated Windows version. This means, among many other exciting things, that I can use Plover as a monitoring system for my steno output when my clients are sitting too far away to read comfortably from their screens. Unlike systems like StreamText (which charge per minute) and Bridge (which, in my experience, are unreliable and prone to freezing the entire connection -- client computer and monitoring computer alike), Plover runs on a completely separate connection that has no effect on my client's connection. I can turn it off and on with impunity and never affect what my client views on their screen. This is a big deal. Plover's still not quite at the stage where it can completely take over from Eclipse, my proprietary steno software, but it's definitely advanced enough to be very useful as a monitoring system. One of its best features is that unlike all the other steno software on the market, it has a length-based stroke buffer rather than a time-based stroke buffer, so there's absolutely no lag between when I write a word and when it appears in its active window.
Proprietary steno software is always written with court reporters in mind, and CART functionality tends to be put in as an afterthought. Lawyers don't care if there's a 1.5 second delay between when something is said and when it appears on the screen, and sometimes court reporters are grateful for the time difference between what they see on their screen with pending translation display turned on (though they still have to read through lots of ugly metacharacters) and what the lawyers see on their realtime screens, since it allows them to correct any errors they might have made before the lawyers can spot them. But CART is a very different business. In order for CART to be truly useful to our clients, the text output has to be as smooth and instantaneous as possible. There's inevitably going to be some delay built in; it takes time for the provider to hear and write the words at one end, and it takes time for the client to read and comprehend the words on the other end. But even a small additional delay added on can mean unnecessary frustration and embarrassment. When a professor asks one of my clients a question and they pause to let the words appear on the screen, each tiny fraction of a second can diminish the professor's estimation of my client's intelligence, competence, or attentiveness. It's not rational and it's not fair, but it's a fact, and I think it's important to minimize it as much as humanly possible.
Since I can't yet use Plover in all my daily work, what do I do? I certainly don't want to make them read through the metacharacters. So I turn pending translation display off, and at every pause in speech, no matter how tiny, I invoke the {FLUSH} command, which I write "TPHR-RB". This manually dumps the buffer and avoids the 1.5 second delay. I just looked at my dictionary statistics, and it tells me that I've written {FLUSH} over 1.1 million times and counting. 1.1 million wasted keystrokes. (Sometimes instead of {FLUSH} I'll write STPH-B instead, which roughly translates to "press the right arrow key" and accomplishes the same thing. I've written that about 105,000 times.) It's so annoying that I've got to slam on the flush stroke pretty much every sentence I write, but it's the only way to give my clients truly instant text output. I've asked the developers of Eclipse if they can include a pending translation display without the messy markup and line jumping, but they've told me it's impossible. I've just got to keep working on making Plover completely functional, and then I'll be able to finally throw away that silly superfluous flush command for good.
Monday, April 9, 2012
CART Problem Solving: Cash Flow
CART Problem Solving Series
Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV
CART PROBLEM: Payments for CART work can be unpredictable and irregular
Today I stopped by my accountant's office, picked up my 2011 tax returns, wrote out the checks, and dropped all four of them (NYC freelancers have to pay a lot of separate tax agencies) in the mailbox. I've still got to pay estimated taxes for the first quarter of 2012, but it definitely feels good to have 2011 taken care of, and most of all, it's good to be able to write those checks and know that I have the money for them in my account. In previous years, I've sometimes had to transfer money for yearly or quarterly tax payments from my emergency savings account, which never feels good. This year I finally started following some cash management advice I first heard about back in 2010, and the resulting peace of mind is incalculable.
If you were reading this blog back then, you might remember my review of The Money Book for Freelancers.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. When I started providing CART in 2007, I had no idea what I was doing. I'd only ever had full-time W-2 jobs before: A regular paycheck at fixed intervals for roughly the same amount each time. As long as I made sure to set up my finances so that I didn't overspend my monthly take-home pay, I was fine. When I started freelancing, everything got a whole lot more complicated. I'd invoice for a two-week stint of work and not get paid for it until a month or two months or sometimes even three months later. I stopped looking forward to winter holidays, spring break, and the summer months especially, because time I wasn't working meant time I wasn't paid for, so it felt less like a vacation and more like enforced unemployment. I always made ends meet, but sometimes it was a struggle to put anything aside, and as soon as the cash flow dried up, I'd have to dip into those savings to spackle over the gap. It was frustrating.
The Money Book gave me a few simple principles to live by, which I've been gradually trying to implement since 2010. The first and easiest was to set up an "overhead account". It felt weird, but I went to my bank, opened up a second checking account, and deposited enough to cover my monthly rent and health insurance. Then I tried to forget it existed. No matter what financial crisis might come up, I at least had one month's big fixed expenses covered. The first few months after I set it up, I emptied out the overhead account right before the beginning of the month, and filled it up as checks came in over the course of the next month, but I'm happy to say I haven't had to dip into the overhead account in over a year now, and it's just been sitting there as a nice chunk of security whenever I need it.
In my first post on The Money Book, I mentioned that I had been tracking all my cash purchases (personal and professional) with an app on my Blackberry and then manually importing those every few weeks into Mint. That didn't last long; the manual import process was just too tedious. I stopped tracking cash for a long time and actually only started again when Mint upgraded its Android app to allow on-the-fly cash tracking last September. I've been pretty good about it since then, though, and it's had two good effects: First, while I don't tend to carry much cash and use my debit card for most things over $20, I now know how much I spend on small purchases -- especially food, which is the most common thing I buy with cash. I've been able to incorporate my lunch money expenditures into my monthly food budget, which is helpful, and I now don't have a big mysterious lump of "Uncategorized" to deal with when I go over my spending in Mint. The second effect is also good. I've got a bit of a junk food habit (my big weakness is potato chips, especially the Honey Mustard Lays), but most bodegas have a $10 debit card minimum, so if I want to pop in for a quick bite of something unhealthy I usually have to pay in cash. But since I've been pretty good about getting in the habit of tracking any cash purchase I make, I've found myself spending less on junk food because when I weigh the crunchy deliciousness against the hassle of taking my phone out and punching through a handful of menus just to register a $2 purchase, I sometimes decide it's not worth the trouble. Beyond just junk food, it makes me generally more aware of where my cash is going and reduces unnecessary impulse buys, which is definitely a good thing.
I didn't start implementing the last and most important idea from The Money Book until the beginning of this year. They strongly recommend that you split each paycheck as soon as it clears and transfer a fixed amount into taxes, savings, and emergency accounts. (Also retirement, but I'm not quite there yet, though I just turned 31, so I've got to get on it pretty soon). I liked the idea as soon as I read about it, but I tended to get my money in irregular lump sums, once every month or so, and it seemed like as soon as I had paid the bills for one month, I had only a small amount left to stretch as long as it took for the next big check to come in. I didn't want to carve anything out of that check, for fear that the remainder wouldn't last me long enough, and I'd have to dip back into the accounts I put the money into, which I knew was a dangerous precedent to set. So I just kept all the money in my business account and prayed for three years that I'd have enough in there to cover taxes, not really knowing how much of the tax money I'd already spent or whether I'd make enough in the next quarter to pay taxes for the previous one. Add in the CART drought that tends to come with the summer season, and it was pretty nerve-wracking. I got by, but my savings accounts stayed flat for far too long. Human nature being what it is, I tended to spend a bit more than I should have when the checks came in all at once, leaving me stranded during the droughts because I hadn't put anything aside during the flush times.
What changed this year? Well, partly it was that I got sick of the uncertainty and decided this was the year to finally put the plan into action, but I have to admit that part of it was also striking a deal with one of the universities I work for. Rather than hiring me as a 1099 independent contractor, it put me on their books as a W-2 employee, with weekly paychecks and tax withholding. Otherwise there was no difference between my relationship with them and my relationship with the schools that pay me as a contractor; they didn't offer me benefits or expect exclusivity or anything like that. It just meant that I got less money up front, since they reserved some of what I earned for the IRS, but it also meant that I got paid weekly, regular as clockwork, and that bit of weekly security made me less anxious about the unpredictable ebb and flow of my other CART work. I started splitting each check I received -- including the paychecks that had already had their tax chunk taken out -- and putting each piece into its designated account. It was surprisingly easy to do, and I found that I had plenty of money left to live on. In fact, I didn't even really miss the difference. My emergency account plumped back up to where it had been before I took out deposit money for our apartment move last spring. My tax account filled steadily, greatly reducing my anxiety over whether I'd be able to pay the Feds this April. And best of all, my long-term hopes and dreams account finally budged from the small, sad figure it had been at for two years, giving me even more incentive to keep working and planning for the future. This W-2 deal is pretty uncommon in CART work, and I'm not relying on it; if that university runs out of students one semester and I pick up the slack at another university with a more conventional 1099 deal, I think I'll still have the self-discipline to keep splitting the checks. It seems scary at first, but it winds up making things much easier to manage in the long run.
So, to sum up, my tips for a stress-free life as a freelance CART provider?
* Get a good accountant. My first year, I did a walk-in at H&R Block. They were brusque and didn't really understand my business. The next two years, I did my own taxes online with TurboTax. It was fine, but I realized I was probably overpaying quite a bit, and since freelancers tend to get audited more than other people, it made me nervous not to have anyone backing me up. Last year and this year I used an accountant that specializes in self-employed and freelance workers, and it's made all the difference. I'm paying far less and I'm much less nervous that a misunderstanding or mistake will get me in big trouble.
* Keep on top of your clients. If they're habitually late payers, don't let it slide; the payment window will just get wider and wider as they try to see what they can get away with. Be polite but dedicated in following up on late payments. Don't let them see your running balance with them as a source of reliable interest-free business loans.
* Keep at least one month of your most important fixed expenses in an overhead account, and try to touch it as little as possible. If you have to take money out of it, prioritize filling it up before spending any money that comes in on optional expenses. It takes a while to build up a real emergency account, but you can probably set aside one month's worth if you try. The peace of mind it'll give you is inexpressible.
* Get a good cash tracker, preferably on your phone so you can enter transactions at will, though a small notebook is fine too, if you don't mind transferring it to your money software by hand. Debit card purchases are great because they can be automatically categorized by most money software, but it's important not to let cash slip through the cracks.
* As soon as you can, get in the habit of splitting each check when it comes in into separate accounts named Taxes, Emergency, and Savings. If you can, try to add Retirement in there too. Taxes should be between 20% and 30%, but the rest can start as small percentages and increase with time as you get more confident in the patterns of your cash flow. Keep these figures in online banks with high interest rates that don't give you a debit card, so you're not tempted to spend them on everyday purchases. Track them with your money software so you can see the numbers going up with each check; it's the motivation you'll need to keep yourself going through the lean times.
Again, if you want more information on managing an irregular cash flow, I really have to recommend The Money Book. It's taught me pretty much everything I know about balancing business revenue with personal expenses, and I'm much less nervous about money since I started following its advice. There's lots of stuff in there that I haven't even mentioned, so check it out. You won't be sorry.
Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV
CART PROBLEM: Payments for CART work can be unpredictable and irregular
Today I stopped by my accountant's office, picked up my 2011 tax returns, wrote out the checks, and dropped all four of them (NYC freelancers have to pay a lot of separate tax agencies) in the mailbox. I've still got to pay estimated taxes for the first quarter of 2012, but it definitely feels good to have 2011 taken care of, and most of all, it's good to be able to write those checks and know that I have the money for them in my account. In previous years, I've sometimes had to transfer money for yearly or quarterly tax payments from my emergency savings account, which never feels good. This year I finally started following some cash management advice I first heard about back in 2010, and the resulting peace of mind is incalculable.
If you were reading this blog back then, you might remember my review of The Money Book for Freelancers.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. When I started providing CART in 2007, I had no idea what I was doing. I'd only ever had full-time W-2 jobs before: A regular paycheck at fixed intervals for roughly the same amount each time. As long as I made sure to set up my finances so that I didn't overspend my monthly take-home pay, I was fine. When I started freelancing, everything got a whole lot more complicated. I'd invoice for a two-week stint of work and not get paid for it until a month or two months or sometimes even three months later. I stopped looking forward to winter holidays, spring break, and the summer months especially, because time I wasn't working meant time I wasn't paid for, so it felt less like a vacation and more like enforced unemployment. I always made ends meet, but sometimes it was a struggle to put anything aside, and as soon as the cash flow dried up, I'd have to dip into those savings to spackle over the gap. It was frustrating.
The Money Book gave me a few simple principles to live by, which I've been gradually trying to implement since 2010. The first and easiest was to set up an "overhead account". It felt weird, but I went to my bank, opened up a second checking account, and deposited enough to cover my monthly rent and health insurance. Then I tried to forget it existed. No matter what financial crisis might come up, I at least had one month's big fixed expenses covered. The first few months after I set it up, I emptied out the overhead account right before the beginning of the month, and filled it up as checks came in over the course of the next month, but I'm happy to say I haven't had to dip into the overhead account in over a year now, and it's just been sitting there as a nice chunk of security whenever I need it.
In my first post on The Money Book, I mentioned that I had been tracking all my cash purchases (personal and professional) with an app on my Blackberry and then manually importing those every few weeks into Mint. That didn't last long; the manual import process was just too tedious. I stopped tracking cash for a long time and actually only started again when Mint upgraded its Android app to allow on-the-fly cash tracking last September. I've been pretty good about it since then, though, and it's had two good effects: First, while I don't tend to carry much cash and use my debit card for most things over $20, I now know how much I spend on small purchases -- especially food, which is the most common thing I buy with cash. I've been able to incorporate my lunch money expenditures into my monthly food budget, which is helpful, and I now don't have a big mysterious lump of "Uncategorized" to deal with when I go over my spending in Mint. The second effect is also good. I've got a bit of a junk food habit (my big weakness is potato chips, especially the Honey Mustard Lays), but most bodegas have a $10 debit card minimum, so if I want to pop in for a quick bite of something unhealthy I usually have to pay in cash. But since I've been pretty good about getting in the habit of tracking any cash purchase I make, I've found myself spending less on junk food because when I weigh the crunchy deliciousness against the hassle of taking my phone out and punching through a handful of menus just to register a $2 purchase, I sometimes decide it's not worth the trouble. Beyond just junk food, it makes me generally more aware of where my cash is going and reduces unnecessary impulse buys, which is definitely a good thing.
I didn't start implementing the last and most important idea from The Money Book until the beginning of this year. They strongly recommend that you split each paycheck as soon as it clears and transfer a fixed amount into taxes, savings, and emergency accounts. (Also retirement, but I'm not quite there yet, though I just turned 31, so I've got to get on it pretty soon). I liked the idea as soon as I read about it, but I tended to get my money in irregular lump sums, once every month or so, and it seemed like as soon as I had paid the bills for one month, I had only a small amount left to stretch as long as it took for the next big check to come in. I didn't want to carve anything out of that check, for fear that the remainder wouldn't last me long enough, and I'd have to dip back into the accounts I put the money into, which I knew was a dangerous precedent to set. So I just kept all the money in my business account and prayed for three years that I'd have enough in there to cover taxes, not really knowing how much of the tax money I'd already spent or whether I'd make enough in the next quarter to pay taxes for the previous one. Add in the CART drought that tends to come with the summer season, and it was pretty nerve-wracking. I got by, but my savings accounts stayed flat for far too long. Human nature being what it is, I tended to spend a bit more than I should have when the checks came in all at once, leaving me stranded during the droughts because I hadn't put anything aside during the flush times.
What changed this year? Well, partly it was that I got sick of the uncertainty and decided this was the year to finally put the plan into action, but I have to admit that part of it was also striking a deal with one of the universities I work for. Rather than hiring me as a 1099 independent contractor, it put me on their books as a W-2 employee, with weekly paychecks and tax withholding. Otherwise there was no difference between my relationship with them and my relationship with the schools that pay me as a contractor; they didn't offer me benefits or expect exclusivity or anything like that. It just meant that I got less money up front, since they reserved some of what I earned for the IRS, but it also meant that I got paid weekly, regular as clockwork, and that bit of weekly security made me less anxious about the unpredictable ebb and flow of my other CART work. I started splitting each check I received -- including the paychecks that had already had their tax chunk taken out -- and putting each piece into its designated account. It was surprisingly easy to do, and I found that I had plenty of money left to live on. In fact, I didn't even really miss the difference. My emergency account plumped back up to where it had been before I took out deposit money for our apartment move last spring. My tax account filled steadily, greatly reducing my anxiety over whether I'd be able to pay the Feds this April. And best of all, my long-term hopes and dreams account finally budged from the small, sad figure it had been at for two years, giving me even more incentive to keep working and planning for the future. This W-2 deal is pretty uncommon in CART work, and I'm not relying on it; if that university runs out of students one semester and I pick up the slack at another university with a more conventional 1099 deal, I think I'll still have the self-discipline to keep splitting the checks. It seems scary at first, but it winds up making things much easier to manage in the long run.
So, to sum up, my tips for a stress-free life as a freelance CART provider?
* Get a good accountant. My first year, I did a walk-in at H&R Block. They were brusque and didn't really understand my business. The next two years, I did my own taxes online with TurboTax. It was fine, but I realized I was probably overpaying quite a bit, and since freelancers tend to get audited more than other people, it made me nervous not to have anyone backing me up. Last year and this year I used an accountant that specializes in self-employed and freelance workers, and it's made all the difference. I'm paying far less and I'm much less nervous that a misunderstanding or mistake will get me in big trouble.
* Keep on top of your clients. If they're habitually late payers, don't let it slide; the payment window will just get wider and wider as they try to see what they can get away with. Be polite but dedicated in following up on late payments. Don't let them see your running balance with them as a source of reliable interest-free business loans.
* Keep at least one month of your most important fixed expenses in an overhead account, and try to touch it as little as possible. If you have to take money out of it, prioritize filling it up before spending any money that comes in on optional expenses. It takes a while to build up a real emergency account, but you can probably set aside one month's worth if you try. The peace of mind it'll give you is inexpressible.
* Get a good cash tracker, preferably on your phone so you can enter transactions at will, though a small notebook is fine too, if you don't mind transferring it to your money software by hand. Debit card purchases are great because they can be automatically categorized by most money software, but it's important not to let cash slip through the cracks.
* As soon as you can, get in the habit of splitting each check when it comes in into separate accounts named Taxes, Emergency, and Savings. If you can, try to add Retirement in there too. Taxes should be between 20% and 30%, but the rest can start as small percentages and increase with time as you get more confident in the patterns of your cash flow. Keep these figures in online banks with high interest rates that don't give you a debit card, so you're not tempted to spend them on everyday purchases. Track them with your money software so you can see the numbers going up with each check; it's the motivation you'll need to keep yourself going through the lean times.
Again, if you want more information on managing an irregular cash flow, I really have to recommend The Money Book. It's taught me pretty much everything I know about balancing business revenue with personal expenses, and I'm much less nervous about money since I started following its advice. There's lots of stuff in there that I haven't even mentioned, so check it out. You won't be sorry.
Monday, April 2, 2012
CART Problem Solving: Communicating Sans Steno
CART Problem Solving Series
Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV
CART PROBLEM: Conversing with someone who has a hearing loss when steno isn't an option
You know that old adage "the shoemaker's children go barefoot"? I was speaking with my 85-year-old dad on the telephone yesterday, and I realized it fit me all too well. My dad has had a pretty serious hearing loss since I was a kid. He says it's from exposure to over an hour of loud static from a television set he was fixing back in the '80s. At first it was just his high frequencies that left him, but it's been progressive over time, and these days he finds talking on the telephone a real strain. I've offered to CART our phone calls, so that he can speak to me while I answer back in steno over the internet. He didn't go for it, just like he always refused to get fitted for hearing aids (he insists that the random one he found in a bargain bin at Goodwill works just fine) and like he refused to read the CART output screen I proudly set up for him at his 80th birthday party. He thinks my job is great and he's proud of me, but he's not interested in making use of accommodations, and I've learned over the years not to push him. When we talk on the phone, he gets by with a mixture of contextual guesswork, bluffing, and asking me to repeat myself. Over the years I've learned how to be patient and clear when communicating, how to paraphrase my sentences in several different ways, avoiding words containing high frequencies (like "th", "f", and "s") as much as possible, and how to gracefully let go of something I wanted to tell him if he's decided that he can't quite get it but he wants to move on. It's not an ideal solution, but it more or less works for us, and the important stuff comes through.
Different people feel differently, though. With my clients, I always email before first meeting them if I can, so that we can discuss their preferences in text. Onsite, I try to get the steno machine set up as early as possible, so that we can communicate unambiguously, without any potential for misunderstanding. Occasionally, though, the steno machine isn't at hand. If I'm meeting one of my deaf or hard of hearing friends for lunch, they don't always want me to take out my bulky and conspicuous gear; sometimes they do, and I never have a problem with it. But sometimes they want to talk without the machine between us. There's a huge variety of communication preferences among people with hearing loss, and it's important to ask them what they prefer and then to follow their lead. If they want to sit somewhere quiet and use mostly speech reading, there are a number of things you can do to make it easier for them: Speak somewhat slowly but normally, without either shouting or over-enunciating (which can distort the ordinary motions of the lips). Insert contextual markers (like "Oh, remember when we were talking about...") when changing subjects, instead of just jumping from one topic to another. Don't speak with your mouth full, turn away in the middle of a sentence, or cover your mouth with your hand. If there's a sudden background noise like a clatter of dishes or a motorcycle going by, pause and resume when it's over. Pay attention to their body language. If they're leaning forward with their eyebrows furrowed and their mouth tight, they might be straining a lot to get what you're saying. Offer to move somewhere quieter if you can, or just ask them if you should be doing anything differently.
All of the above generally works best for people who use their ears to some extent, with or without hearing aids or cochlear implants. Speech reading without any audio input whatever can be very difficult and frustrating, so many people without much audio feedback use other methods to communicate. Learning ASL is always a good idea in our line of work, though it takes a lot of intensive study to become conversational, much less fluent. I've been studying it for a number of years, and I'm still more or less a novice, though I hope to gradually get better with time and practice. Keep in mind that a lot of people with hearing loss don't know ASL. Late-deafened and hard of hearing people are less likely than culturally Deaf people to sign, though it's never good to assume based on someone's background whether they do or not. Always ask. Many of my clients don't know ASL, and at least least two of them have preferred Cued Speech instead. I don't know Cued Speech, but I'm planning to take a crash course in it this spring. I'm excited. It'll definitely take less training than learning an entirely new language like ASL, but it's important to remember that significantly fewer people know how to cue than how to sign.
I couldn't embed it, but click here for an ASL version of Jabberwocky
If all else fails and you're still unable to use your steno machine for whatever reason, there's always the old standbys: Gesture, facial expression, and longhand writing -- or, more often these days, tapping out letters on a smartphone keyboard. Whatever method you use to communicate, just be patient, attentive, and respectful, and you'll never go far wrong.
Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV
CART PROBLEM: Conversing with someone who has a hearing loss when steno isn't an option
You know that old adage "the shoemaker's children go barefoot"? I was speaking with my 85-year-old dad on the telephone yesterday, and I realized it fit me all too well. My dad has had a pretty serious hearing loss since I was a kid. He says it's from exposure to over an hour of loud static from a television set he was fixing back in the '80s. At first it was just his high frequencies that left him, but it's been progressive over time, and these days he finds talking on the telephone a real strain. I've offered to CART our phone calls, so that he can speak to me while I answer back in steno over the internet. He didn't go for it, just like he always refused to get fitted for hearing aids (he insists that the random one he found in a bargain bin at Goodwill works just fine) and like he refused to read the CART output screen I proudly set up for him at his 80th birthday party. He thinks my job is great and he's proud of me, but he's not interested in making use of accommodations, and I've learned over the years not to push him. When we talk on the phone, he gets by with a mixture of contextual guesswork, bluffing, and asking me to repeat myself. Over the years I've learned how to be patient and clear when communicating, how to paraphrase my sentences in several different ways, avoiding words containing high frequencies (like "th", "f", and "s") as much as possible, and how to gracefully let go of something I wanted to tell him if he's decided that he can't quite get it but he wants to move on. It's not an ideal solution, but it more or less works for us, and the important stuff comes through.
Different people feel differently, though. With my clients, I always email before first meeting them if I can, so that we can discuss their preferences in text. Onsite, I try to get the steno machine set up as early as possible, so that we can communicate unambiguously, without any potential for misunderstanding. Occasionally, though, the steno machine isn't at hand. If I'm meeting one of my deaf or hard of hearing friends for lunch, they don't always want me to take out my bulky and conspicuous gear; sometimes they do, and I never have a problem with it. But sometimes they want to talk without the machine between us. There's a huge variety of communication preferences among people with hearing loss, and it's important to ask them what they prefer and then to follow their lead. If they want to sit somewhere quiet and use mostly speech reading, there are a number of things you can do to make it easier for them: Speak somewhat slowly but normally, without either shouting or over-enunciating (which can distort the ordinary motions of the lips). Insert contextual markers (like "Oh, remember when we were talking about...") when changing subjects, instead of just jumping from one topic to another. Don't speak with your mouth full, turn away in the middle of a sentence, or cover your mouth with your hand. If there's a sudden background noise like a clatter of dishes or a motorcycle going by, pause and resume when it's over. Pay attention to their body language. If they're leaning forward with their eyebrows furrowed and their mouth tight, they might be straining a lot to get what you're saying. Offer to move somewhere quieter if you can, or just ask them if you should be doing anything differently.
All of the above generally works best for people who use their ears to some extent, with or without hearing aids or cochlear implants. Speech reading without any audio input whatever can be very difficult and frustrating, so many people without much audio feedback use other methods to communicate. Learning ASL is always a good idea in our line of work, though it takes a lot of intensive study to become conversational, much less fluent. I've been studying it for a number of years, and I'm still more or less a novice, though I hope to gradually get better with time and practice. Keep in mind that a lot of people with hearing loss don't know ASL. Late-deafened and hard of hearing people are less likely than culturally Deaf people to sign, though it's never good to assume based on someone's background whether they do or not. Always ask. Many of my clients don't know ASL, and at least least two of them have preferred Cued Speech instead. I don't know Cued Speech, but I'm planning to take a crash course in it this spring. I'm excited. It'll definitely take less training than learning an entirely new language like ASL, but it's important to remember that significantly fewer people know how to cue than how to sign.
I couldn't embed it, but click here for an ASL version of Jabberwocky
If all else fails and you're still unable to use your steno machine for whatever reason, there's always the old standbys: Gesture, facial expression, and longhand writing -- or, more often these days, tapping out letters on a smartphone keyboard. Whatever method you use to communicate, just be patient, attentive, and respectful, and you'll never go far wrong.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)