Opening a Business was not Courage but Survival

I know it's not nice, but I think it's time to de-bunk a few myths about women and work in Italy. I am speaking here from my own experience, of course. These are the factors that contributed to my opening my own business.

1. If you are freshly out of university, you have a chance of getting a job with a decent contract which could turn into a lifetime contract later. The general (un-written, but certainly talked about) rule is that the employer must have the idea that you will work at least 10 years before making babies (not kidding).
2. Most of the women I know have Co.Co.Pro contracts, which means they do NOT have those fancy benefits that we Americans drool over, like lots of vacation, maternity leave, etc. The more education they have the more this is the case. This is a contract with minimum tax contributions by the employer and a very clear expiration date.
3. Almost all of the men I know here have the lifetime contract (with all the goodies). Level of education does not matter.
4. If a woman has the contract mentioned in point two, she should expect it not to be renewed once she has announced a pregnancy (it's not legal, but there are lots of other reasons why your work is sub-par).
5. Myth 1: Women in the workforce are "baby-makers" who want to take advantage of the system. Women take jobs so that they can get paid for leaving for an extended period (while getting paid!!) once they get pregnant. This belief is held by men, but also by many women.
6. Myth 2: Once a woman has a baby, all she can think of is having another one, so it's best to give her a job with less responsiblity. (I only know men with this idea, and it happens all the time. A woman comes back after maternity leave, sometimes even after a minimal time away, and her job description has completely changed, her office is down in the basement without windows, etc. Let's punish her!! )

Other considerations:

If you find yourself without a job and you are in that magic window of about 30-45 years of age, it is VERY difficult to find a job. You cost too much and are high risk (it's that uterus thing!).

If you do free-lance jobs (as many teachers and translators do) you can only earn up to 5,000 euros gross without a contract.

I decided to open my own business when my last contract was not renewed (see point 2. I have never been offered any other type of contract while in Italy). I knew it was my only real possibility for moving forward. I decided that I was done having a "boss," especially a sexist one who routinely talked about women as being "Ok except when it's that time of the month" (while the other women giggled on in knowing agreement).

By the way, I am a foreigner, so I can talk about these things openly with people, especially men who hold some of the wackiest beliefs I have heard about women. I have point blank asked managers about their hiring practices. One told me he ONLY hires women from 20-22 years old. Otherwise they "leave you (to have babies) before the honeymoon is over."

At my first job interview in Italy, I was asked about my "family plans" as if they were more important than my qualifications!

What the big boys don't seem to understand:

1. How many smart women decide to open their own businesses and have a child-friendly workplace.
2. That female employees, when treated like human beings, tend to have shorter maternity leaves.
3. Maternity is a permanent situation, but leaves are temporary. Get over it!
4. Women are multi-taskers. They can be moms and ALSO think about work.
5. Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in the World.

So, for  lots of these kinds of reasons, I opened my little business. I got pregnant while I was independent, by the way. I worked up to a week after my due date (a week before the birth) and two weeks after the baby was born (I taught with her in a marsupial. My students didn't seem to mind).

Before opening my business, I was always a little worried (even though I wanted to start a family) about getting pregnant while I was working for other people for fear of what they (the MEN) would think of me. Now I think that is crazy.

Sure, I have not yet reached anything near my earning potential since I went independent (and I pay GOBS of taxes, which half what I earn anyway), but I negotiate my own terms and have higher status (Interesting: free-lance with a tax number, a libero professionista, has a much higher prestige than an employee who may make 10 times more money. It doesn't bring home the bacon, I realize, but it's better than feeling like a peon).

That, and, I only work with people I like. Period.

PS. Most men and women I know  are NOT jerks. They are hard-working and NOT sexist. But all it takes is a couple of sillies in positions of power and we have a problem...

Feeling the Fear

One of the things I'm reading about as far as jumping out of my low-earning habit is to go where you don't feel comfortable. I had just decided to do that when my friend Marina asked  if I could help her out with one of her jobs because she has so many things going on this week. That's part of the deal, too: recognizing when to say no so that you can free yourself up for bigger things or new opportunities. You can tell Marina is ahead of me and has already finished the book.

Anyway, while she was stressing out about how to finish everything, when she finally asked me and realized how happy I was, I think it put the situation into a new perspective. Sometimes saying no can be a positive thing. I normally would have said no to this kind of job, even though I desperately want to try it just because part of me thinks that I'm a big fake and that I will get found out if I tried it.

But then I think-- wait a minute, if Marina can do it, why can't I? Time to feel the fear and try something new. She was having other thoughts, though, like, what about that money I'm missing out on, and what if they like Karoline better and never call me again. See? We're all full of self doubt sometimes.

I assured her that we are partners and friends and colleagues and that there is enough work around for everyone. There is no reason for us to compete.

Only collaborate. Thank you Marina!

Reading the Financial Papers Can be Enlightening!

So I was just scanning the Sole 24 Ore when I found this article. It talks about reducing taxes up to 96% and my type of tax number is included. We'll see if it will apply to me. Hope hope hope!!!

Finding that article made me feel pretty smart. We'll see how long that keeps up as I try to read and understand it.

Dear Italy,

What is UP with putting the deadline for filing taxes a week before my vacation??? I could forgive you if you didn't bill me for last year and 98% of this year (INPS). THAT IS ONE BIG TAX BILL (and I didn't even make that much!).


In fact, where else can you make less than 20,000 euros and be taxed at nearly 50%?!

OUCH!

That's it. I am going to go out and LEASE the most expensive car I can find, upgrade my cell phone and plan, and designate a room in my house as an office and write off all expenses (sorry, Baby, your crib is going in the living room).

Hmmph!

Love,
Karoline

50 Percent tax!

Now I feel totally justified in not wanting to call the accountant!!!

Why do I freeze up about finances?

I know what I need to do: schedule an appointment with my accountant to get 2010 settled. I just can't seem to get my lazy arse to do it. I think (but I'm not sure) I have to do it by the end of this month.

My finances are pretty simple. I just need to print my invoices, write the dates they were paid, and photocopy phone bills and any health receipts  (I get to deduct those for a 20% refund), put them all together in a folder and hand them over to my accountant. I deduct gas, too, so I will give him those receipts as well. I am not yet a big earner, so I only have to declare and pay taxes for my little business once a year.

Easy peasy.

But what's keeping me from making that call? It's the idea that I will then have to pay taxes, and him. Now, I remember last year, I didn't have to pay that much at all (I pay 39% tax total, but 20% is paid by the people I bill, and they pay it directly, so I never even see that money. The other 19% I have to pay after any deductions, which my accountant figures out based on the documents I give him. I haven't bought any equipment this year, I don't do much expensing because I don't travel very often and when I do, usually the client pays that stuff, so basically what I earned is what I will pay on. Period.) I have an excel sheet where I keep track of all of this, by the way, so I could even tell you exactly how much I will be expected to pay (I am paralyzed from looking for some reason). I know I have more than enough money in the bank to cover my tax bill and accountant fees (which is NOT the case when I have to pay the taxes for the Association. There we pay LOTS more taxes and the money is NOT there). I planned for them and as a rule spend much less than what I earn, so everything should be simple, right?

Well, I'm frozen anyway. It's that poor person in my head saying YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY! THE LONGER YOU PUT IT OFF, THE MORE MONEY YOU'LL HAVE IN YOUR ACCOUNT.

This is the same voice that used to scream at me when bills were due in college; I often paid them late (dumb!) because I was so afraid of having an empty bank account. So I would accrue late fees and be even poorer once I paid them. I also lived from paycheck to paycheck then, because spending everything was more in line with the way I felt inside-- Broke.

I have come a long way since then. But that voice is still there sometimes, and it doesn't matter how much I have changed my relationship with money over the years. It awakens a real fear that I will end up with nothing.

I am not the only one who hears these voices. I'm sure those same doubts come to people who want to lose weight, change careers, create meaningful relationships, and do other kinds of difficult things. These inner voices are experts at the slap down.

You may not be into affirmations and things, but I can tell you that if you have these nasty demons inside of you, they can help to squelch them, at least temporarily. Here is my mantra for today:

I AM READY TO CLOSE 2010. I AM RICH.

Plus, it's Saturday and my accountant's office is closed. Phyooo!!!

Stop trying to look cool

At a company in Trieste I used to work for, all of the top managers had really fancy status cars. The other cars in the fleet were the cheapest cars you could find. They didn't even have radios, so that employees would just wear their ipods when they drove to worksites far away. The sense of hierarchy was so strong that these super intelligent people were made to feel like unimportant losers.

This feeling, that some people are important, others aren't, was communicated in other ways too, especially through equipment and cell phones. I was a marketing person, therefore  my hours weren't billable, which made me less valuable to the company. This was communicated to me through my work tools, which were hand-me downs from my colleagues. ("Ahhh. That phone was mine for a while, before that, it was Francesco's and before that, who knows. Gosh, it looks so BIG now, compared to this one..."). I remember the day I plugged in my laptop dinosaur and it caught on fire! The people with the highest status, communicated through fancy phones, cool computers, and cars, were the sales people (I know. Gag).

I still lust for a fancy phone, by the way, but I use a 20 euro Nokia (which I bought with my own money when I opened my business), partly because, when I decided I wanted to create wealth, rather than just get by,  I started to track my spending. I mean every penny. I still do. It forced me to really look at where my money was going (beer and entertainment). Did you ever read the Millionaire Next Door? That's what made me decide I would rather be a rich girl with a crappy car (mine, all mine) than a fancy person with no bank in the bank.

While still at that job, I decided to try to live (with my husband) on just one salary and sock the other away into savings. That meant no eating out, walks with friends instead of dinner, and shoe polish and black magic marker instead of new shoes. 

It turned out to be easier than I thought, we became great cooks, and more outdoorsy, and pretty much no one noticed...until I told a colleague that we were living on one salary. He got angry and accused me of making more money than him. Which made his fancy phone seem like just a way to keep him quiet while I was making the big bucks...