Screw friend-work. No offense to friends - but if you need to build a business, and you need to build a new lifestyle for yourself, the last thing you need to

Screw friend-work. No offense to friends - but if you need to build a business, and you need to build a new lifestyle for yourself, the last thing you need to do is charity work for someone else's profit. I've personally spurned friend-work, and it happened right around the time I was being dragged into 'friendly' conference calls at 11 am Saturday mornings and I was too 'friendly' to bill for that. I think you did it wrong and became jaded. If you're suffering weekends and nights and sacrificing your life, it should be: a) temporary - temp project, crunch time or b) an investment - this client/person will really appreciate it, and be a great networking point / reference / future source of work and c) it should be worth your time money-wise. The whole point of freelancing is 'time is money.' At the end of it, you should have nice savings, and during it, the sound of gold coins clinging together rings in your mind's ear. More on point C. When you're an FTE, you're owned (at least in the U.S. [and the UK!]) by the employer. Weekends, nights, releases, problems, those things will impact you outside the 9 to 5 in any serious job. No overtime pay. There's some stuff about mission and dedication and other platitudes, and in some industries bonuses, but other than that - no overtime paid out for your suffering. If you complain, that makes you a naughty person, etc. and so forth, so you have to suppress complaining about such things. However, as a freelancer time is money, and you sell that time, you exchange your labor time for cash in the bank. And you tax deduct some of the conveniences, like transportation/taxis and (depending on 2018 tax changes and interpretation) meals too. You might also tax deduct that standing desk you wanted, a new laptop, etc. - things that make you work better. If you 'lost' nights and weekends then I'm afraid something went wrong. What if your rate was double? What if it didn't take up 40% of your normal job? I disagree about opportunity cost, which is of course subjective. For me, opportunity cost was slaving away in corporate cubicle farms and getting dragged into meetings (30-50% of my time) rather than jumping around companies and learning cool new tech.