Sorry to say, but you're not really up to date here. Restrictions have been tightened and benefits cut in the last years: > Arbeitslosengeld is an unemployment

Sorry to say, but you're not really up to date here. Restrictions have been tightened and benefits cut in the last years: > Arbeitslosengeld is an unemployment insurance money paying 60% (alone) to 66% (families) of former income for one or two years. It's a maximum of 12 month unless your 50 or older. The minimum is at 6 month. The actual duration depends on how many month you were employed in the last 5 years. You need to have at least 12 month to be eligible at all. If you're on/off employments the times get summed up. > Gruendungszuschuss used to be a fine thing up until 2011 when it became voluntary from the government side. Before it used to be that any application that passed a very low bar would get accepted, now it depends. It's actually your unemployment money plus a fixed amount for health insurance. The fixed amount gets paid for up to a year and can get extended. You must be unemployed on the day that you apply. This is the reason I was unemployed for a single day - applied and founded the next day. If you're trying to convert a running side-job things get tricky. If your business fails and you're trying to get another Gründungszuschuss you'll not get it. > Health, unemployment, and retirement insurance for self employed are voluntary. Health insurance is mandatory nowadays. You can still choose which, but you must choose one. > Last not least its possible to go to Hartz IV as a self employment. You can try, but you'll probably fail. Hartz IV has a lot of obligations attached, such as having to go to job interviews when they send you an offer. That doesn't sit well with founding. > Now the drawbacks. Health insurance for self employed assumes that you at least earn Euro2000 The first year they ask you for an estimate. It's true that you don't get your money back, so go for a low estimate. Don't lowball it though, there's a lot of freelance that get taken by surprise when they have to pay up at the end of the term. Rules for private health insurance might differ, I don't know about that. However, if you earn much less than 2000 Euro you're in trouble anyways, after taxes there's not much left of that. I always assume that ~ 40% of what I invoice is taxes. > There is an infamous politician, called von der Leyen, who came up with the internet Stopp sign, and who is proposing forcing self employed into retirement insurance. Actually, I hope that this push succeeds. There could be exemptions for the first (two?) years, but any self employed person that can't afford retirement savings is just kicking the can down the road.