The Pros and Cons of Contracting
Let’s be honest from the start: this isn’t for everyone. Contracting is a lifestyle choice as much as a career move, and whether it suits you depends on your personality, your circumstances, and what you actually want from work. I’ve been asked more times than I can count whether I’d recommend it. My answer is always the same: it depends.
What I can do is give you the unvarnished version — none of the breathless ‘be your own boss!’ nonsense you’ll find elsewhere. Just what it’s actually like.
What’s in a Name?
Various terms get used: contractor, freelancer, consultant, gigster. For the purposes of this site, I’ll use ‘consultant’. It’s the most accurate description of what most of us actually do.
The Disadvantages
Yes, disadvantages first. If that puts you off, contracting probably isn’t for you.
It’s Not the Easy Option
The fantasy: no commute, no micromanaging boss, no dreary nine-to-five. The reality: you still have to work, and harder than most permanent employees.
Nobody comes to you. You hustle for contracts. And unlike a staff job where you can coast once you’re part of the furniture, clients are paying a premium rate for a premium result. There’s no ‘annual review’ where you agree on vague improvement goals for next year. You either deliver or you’re gone. It can be that blunt.
Your Health
If you have a condition that means regular time off, contracting is probably not for you. Not working means not getting paid. Clients on a tight project schedule also have little patience for someone who can’t reliably show up. That’s not a moral judgement — it’s just the reality of how projects work.
Managing Your Finances
This is where most people underestimate what they’re getting into. As a consultant, you are running a business. There is no sick pay, no life assurance, no company pension, no paid holidays. If you’ve spent your career in permanent employment, you may not even realise how much of your ‘package’ you’ve been taking for granted.
Beyond that, you’ll be responsible for corporation tax, income tax, VAT, and making sure the right amounts land with HMRC at the right times. Get this wrong and the consequences are yours alone.
One more thing that catches people out: if you work directly with clients rather than through an agency, you may be waiting 30, 60, or even 90 days to get paid. Cash flow planning is not optional.
Paperwork and Administration
As a permanent employee, someone else handles your tax, pension, and compliance. You just show up and get paid. As a consultant, all of that falls to you. Registrations, filings, insurance, invoicing — it all needs to be done correctly and on time. If admin isn’t your strong suit, factor in the cost of an accountant from day one.
Training and Keeping Up to Date
There’s no HR department sending you on courses. If your field requires ongoing certifications or regulatory updates, that time and money comes out of your pocket — and it’s time you’re not earning. Plan for it.
The Costs of Getting Started
Before you earn a penny, there are costs to cover:
- Accommodation, food and travel if working away from home
- Vehicle running costs and fuel
- Air and train fares
- Specialist equipment
- Certifications and professional registrations
- Public liability and professional indemnity insurance
- Additional costs if working abroad — see our Working Abroad article
And there are less predictable ones too. You sign a six-month contract and rent a flat near the client site. The client pulls the plug after one month. Are you still liable for five months’ rent? These things happen.
Family and Home
If you’re working away from home — which many consultants do — you’ll likely be away Monday to Friday for the duration of a contract. That puts real strain on relationships and family life. Your partner needs to understand what they’re signing up for. If you have young children, think carefully about what extended absences actually mean in practice.
Working abroad adds another dimension entirely. Some people relish it. Others find it isolating in ways they didn’t anticipate.
Social Life
Your regular weekly social activities? Probably gone for the duration of each contract. When you are home at weekends, there are a dozen other things competing for that time. Working away from home and familiar surroundings can be genuinely lonely. Some people compare it to a form of exile. Others love the solitude. Know which type you are before you commit.
Job Security
As a consultant, you know the exact date your income stops. There’s always the question of where the next contract comes from. Even in good times, there’s a background hum of uncertainty that never fully goes away. For some people that’s intolerable. For others, it’s just the price of freedom.
The Benefits
Right. Now for the good news — and there’s plenty of it.
Better Work-Life Balance
Within reason, you have genuine flexibility over when, where and how long you work. Some consultants take an extended break between contracts. Some arrange their schedule around family life. Some work flat out and bank the difference. The point is: it’s your call.
If you’re working near the client site rather than commuting from home, you can often choose accommodation that makes your daily life easier. Your job doesn’t dictate where you live.
You Get Paid for the Hours You Work
This sounds obvious, but it’s a more honest arrangement than most permanent jobs. Work 45 hours, get paid for 45 hours. Think of a plumber: you call one out, he spends two hours fixing the boiler, he charges for two hours. You wouldn’t ask him to also replace a radiator for free because you’re a loyal customer. Nobody would think that was reasonable. Yet permanent employees accept this kind of thing routinely.
As a consultant, you don’t work unpaid overtime ‘for the good of the company’. You don’t stay late because you’re worried about what your boss thinks. You work the hours agreed, and you’re paid for them.
Office Politics
Because you’re not part of the permanent hierarchy, the dynamics are different. You’re not competing with anyone for a promotion. You’re not managing upwards. You’re not playing golf with the boss to stay in favour. You come in, do the job, and leave.
If there’s someone difficult in the team, you know you won’t be working with them forever. That knowledge alone makes dealing with them considerably easier.
It’s worth considering the deeper version of this point. Think about a difficult boss you’ve had as a permanent employee — someone who made working life genuinely unpleasant. That person had considerable power over you: your salary, your annual review, your promotion prospects, your reference, your standing in the organisation. You probably modified your behaviour around them more than you realised — choosing your words carefully, managing their moods, avoiding certain subjects, not pushing back when you should have. That’s what structural dependency does.
As a contractor, the relationship with the same person would have been fundamentally different. They’re a client, not a boss. They can end the contract, but they can’t define your career. You can disagree with them professionally, push back on bad decisions, and be honest in ways that a permanent employee in the same situation often simply can’t afford to be. The work may be identical. The psychological experience of doing it is not.
Travel and Variety
Contracting naturally opens doors to working in different places — other cities, other countries, other industries. This isn’t just good for your CV. Working across multiple companies and cultures makes you a more capable and well-rounded person. Not many people can honestly say they’ve lived and worked in Berlin, or Amsterdam, or Singapore. Contracting makes that possible.
Job Security — the Other Side
Yes, I’m listing it again under benefits. Here’s why.
The received wisdom that permanent employment equals security hasn’t held up well in recent decades. Globalisation, outsourcing, and cost-cutting have made redundancy a normal part of corporate life. Companies no longer offer the loyalty they once expected from employees. A ‘permanent’ job with a probationary period offers no more real security than a six-month contract.
As a consultant, you’re not dependent on one employer’s decisions. Your income depends on your skills, your reputation, and your network — things you control. A good consultant with a solid track record rarely struggles to find the next contract.
Experience and Knowledge
Working across multiple clients, industries, and countries gives you a breadth of experience that permanent employees rarely accumulate. You understand how different organisations work, what approaches succeed and which fail, and how to adapt quickly to new environments. Over time, this makes you more valuable, not less. The best consultants find that clients start approaching them rather than the other way around.
You as a Person
This one’s harder to quantify, but it’s real. Contracting requires you to back yourself. You have to believe in your own abilities enough to walk into a new environment, deliver results, and move on. That builds a kind of confidence and adaptability that a staff job rarely demands.
You learn to read people quickly, to establish trust fast, and to get things done without the benefit of years of institutional knowledge. It makes you sharper. It makes you more resilient. Most former consultants who go back to permanent work find they bring something to the table that their colleagues simply don’t have.
The Bottom Line
Contracting offers more money, more flexibility, more variety, and more control over your working life. It also brings more uncertainty, more responsibility, and more administrative overhead. Neither side of that equation cancels the other out — they’re just different priorities.
If you want to, map it out. List what matters to you, weight it honestly, and see where you land. And if you try contracting and decide it’s not for you, you can always go back. You’ll return with more experience and better perspective than if you’d never tried it at all.