Every style has its advantages and disadvantages, its risks and rewards, but most important is that style must match trader. If you jump into trading believing that just because someone else can do it this way, then so can you – you may be in for a very painful surprise.

Never trade someone else’s plan. Never trade someone else’s style. You absolutely must know your own temperament well enough to determine what you will trade, and exactly how you will trade it. Your money management rules, your tolerance for losses, i.e. costs, , your willingness to change trade if your market opinion is proven wrong – these are true secrets to trading that separate novice from veteran. With these in place, emotions can be reduced if not eliminated.

After all, which would put you most at ease? Driving through an unfamiliar city alone with no guidance, driving with a map, or driving with a full color street-level-detail GPS navigation system?

I’ll take GPS, thank you.

So before you place your first, or next, trade, consider following:

a. Do you understand what you are trading and why?

b. Do you know what you will do given any of possible outcomes?

c. Are you ready and willing to admit you were wrong about trade, and if so what will you do about it and when?

d. Are you comfortable with thought of losing money you are putting into trade, and will your trading account survive to trade another day if you do?

These are all part of what you need to have in your plan. I urge you to have considered them thoroughly before risking slightest amount of money in a real trade.

Emotions – “You can’t trade with ‘em, and you must trade without ‘em.”

RATES

• As a self-employed service provider, you receive income based on your billable hours, that is, time spent on performing services for your clients.

• You furnishes your own supplies. Unless service is one that is performed off- site, you supply your own workspace.

• You have to equip yourself to be in business and provide your services: You must procure and equip your workplace, invest in skill and product development, market your services, purchase business insurance, and handle billing, recordkeeping and collections.

• As a business owner you take on a great deal of risk. It is reasonable, and expected, that your rates should allow for a reasonable profit over and above your expenses and salary.

The above is true for any business. Below are additional costs you pay because you are self-employed.

• Unlike most of your employed counterparts, there is no employer subsidy for your health insurance. And, as an individual, your costs will be higher than they would be as part of a larger organization.

• Aside from Social Security, you are totally responsible for your own retirement nest egg.

• You will pay both employee's and employer's share of FICA tax burden (15.3%); double burden that falls upon your employee counterparts. The IRS allows limited deductions for this tax, but your net share is still far higher than for your employed counterparts.

But you can only bill for services rendered.

The upshot is that as a self-employed service provider you must cover many expenses that employees do not. Therefore you should have no qualms about charging an adequate rate to cover your expenses and make a living.

Ellen Zucker has been self-employed for over ten years.