[vbsteven]

As a Belgian myself: self-employment is the key here. It's not that hard to pull in 100-200K annually in the current belgian tech space, I've done it consistently for the past 5 years, with lots of periods where I did not work full time.

[ineedasername]

In the US at least, as a contractor, you have to make a lot more in gross pay to come out equivalent to what you'd earn at a lower salary somewhere else. You have to cover:

* Health Insurance

* No paid time off: Want 4 weeks off a year? That's a 7.6% reduction in pay.

* You have to pay both the employee & employer side of payroll taxes

* You're not eligible for unemployment, so you need to save more money to cover that possibility

* No retirement fund so you don't get any matching funds and have to really be on top of what your long term needs are and take that off the top of your income.

As an example, I have a normal salary full-time job, but I also have a hobby business on the side. The money I make from that given the tax bracket I'm in, federal, state, payroll taxes, means my "take home" pay from is taxed around 43%. And that's without needing to take anything extra out of it for paid time off, health insurance, or retirement, all of which are well covered by my salaried position.

[topoftheforts]

Any advice on how to get there? I'm a contractor after having worked full time for a few years. Working with a very few long term clients, just me.

Is your daily rate very high, are you delegating work to other people, or what is it?

[LunaSea]

I'm working in Belgium as well and really wondering what space you were working now because 100K-200K net is way above developer wages here.

[abyssin]

Did you have to specialize in some kind of technology or sector? Or is it simply because self-employment means paying less taxes?