Day in the Life of an Idiot

Someone (Scalzi? Andrew who used to do SF Book Club? Stross?) had a comment about money from writing that should generalize to just about any contracting career. Bank half of any check you get. You'll need it to cover income taxes, social security, etc. - one of the taxes for typical employees is 50% employee paid, 50% employer paid, but writers and other contract types are 100% self-paid. Yeah, it's ugly.