Just Quit to Freelance, Unsure What to Charge? The 12 Bus

2026-10-30

The phone buzzes against your knee on the number 12 bus. It's 16:20 and the windows are fogged. You are wedged between a pushchair and a man eating crisps.

The name on the screen is a small agency you pitched to last week. You let it ring twice, then answer in the quiet voice people use on buses.

"Hi, it's Mira."

Let's call you Mira. She is an illustrative character, a made-up designer. If you recognise yourself, that's the point.

The question you knew was coming

Three weeks ago you handed back your laptop and your door pass. Your team signed a card with a cartoon cactus on it. Someone said, "You'll be amazing." You smiled and carried a cardboard box to the tram.

Since then you have been busy. You updated your portfolio. You changed the photo on your profile twice. You answered every message within eleven minutes, so nobody would think you had nothing on.

Now the woman from the agency says it warmly: "We'd love to work with you. Before I send the brief, what's your hourly rate?"

The bus brakes. The pushchair rolls into your shin.

Your head goes through everything at once. Your old salary is in there somewhere, but you can't remember if it's the number before or after the deductions. A friend once mentioned fifty. A forum thread said "never go below eighty." Another thread said eighty would scare off beginners.

You hear yourself say, "It's sixty."

"Great," she says, at once. Too quickly.

And there it is, that small hollow drop. You've just said a number you invented on a bus, and it was accepted without a pause. That is either very good news or very bad news, and you have no way to tell which.

The stop you missed

You ride two stops past your own. You don't notice until the bus turns into the depot loop.

Walking back in the drizzle, you try to do the maths in your head. Sixty an hour. Eight hours a day. That sounds like a lot, more than you ever earned in the office, and for a moment you feel rich.

Then the questions start arriving, one at a time, like people queuing at a door.

Will you really bill eight hours a day? Last week you answered messages, fixed your website and wrote a pitch that went nowhere. Who pays for those hours? What about the weeks you don't work? Holidays used to just happen. Sick days used to just happen. Somebody else's budget absorbed them.

No one told you that when you leave a job, the invisible parts leave with it. Nobody mentioned the quiet extras your employer was carrying, and now you are the one carrying them.

You don't have an answer, so you do the thing many people do. You decide not to think about it until the first invoice. Maybe the number will turn out fine.

What it costs when you guess

The cost doesn't show up in one dramatic moment. It arrives in small, polite ways.

It's the project that runs long, and you say nothing because you quoted a low number and feel you can't complain. It's the second client who asks for a "friends' rate" and you agree, because you can't explain what your normal rate is built from. It's the Sunday afternoon when you realise you've worked four weekends in a row and your bank balance still looks like a thin pancake.

Mostly it's the feeling in your chest. You are good at your craft, you know you are, and yet every time someone asks about money you feel like a person winging it. A real business, you think, would know its number. Yours was invented between two bus stops.

You don't need a bigger number. You need one you can stand behind without your voice going up at the end.

The call with a quieter ending

Imagine a different version of that afternoon.

A few weeks earlier, on a quiet morning with a cup of tea, you sat down once and wrote out what your year actually looks like. Not your hopes, just the facts. How many weeks you want off. What your life costs. What goes to taxes, which you'd talk through with a professional, because this isn't something to guess at. How many hours in a week you'll realistically spend on paying work, and how many on everything around it.

It took less time than the forum threads did.

Now the phone buzzes on the bus, and the question comes: "What's your hourly rate?"

You don't flinch. You say a number, and you know where it comes from. You don't need to justify it. If she pushes back, you can offer a different shape, a smaller scope or a longer timeline, rather than quietly shaving your own wage.

"Great," she says. "I'll send the brief tomorrow."

You stay on the bus and get off at your own stop. The pushchair is still there, and so are the crisps. Outside, the fog on the windows is just fog.

That evening you open a clean invoice with your number already in it. There's a due date and a total, and a line for tax that sits where it belongs. You don't feel like someone playing at freelancing. You feel like someone who runs a small, quiet business.

One gentle next step

If you recently left a job, or you've been guessing your rate for longer than you'd like to admit, a small free workbook might help. It's called Know Your Rate – Free Freelance Rate Calculator + Invoice Template (Excel). It's built to help you find your minimum hourly and day rate, and then send a clean, printable invoice with automatic totals, a tax line and a due date. It's pay what you want, so you can start at zero.

It won't make your decisions for you, and it doesn't replace a tax professional. It just gives you a calm place to see the numbers.

Take a look at the Rate Calculator + Invoice Template

The next time someone asks what you charge, you can answer on the bus, in the queue or in the kitchen. And you won't be holding your breath while you do.

An illustrative story, written with AI assistance.