Jason Voorhees
𝕯𝖝𝕯 𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖜 𝕵𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗
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- May 15, 2020
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All these are very rough estimates and approximations. Im honestly not sure about the specifics myself because I don't do my taxes and I'm not of those people who micro manges their finances so don't come at me if I made some miscalculation or mis spoke some regulations. I initially wanted to include statements to add legitimacy to my claims but for privacy reasons it seems to be a bad idea. In my first year I didn't do much to earn any money. I just wasted my time and my parents money on useless shit
I started freelancing in my second year. I was mostly experimenting. I struggled to get clients and worked for peanuts for my first 10 projects. Like under $200-300 but it was still a big amount for me but then slowly picked up small MERN stack gigs on Upwork and Fiverr around 12-13 iirc building e-commerce sites, dashboards, and basic web apps. which brought in roughly ₹6-7 Lakh ($8k). This is the first big payment I ever got and immediately invested it in crypto like a gambler.
looksmax.org
Being a student. I didn't have a huge tax burden but I filed under the normal IT slab and leveraged standard deductions which kept my tax rate around 15-16%. Most of this money I reinvested
Year three was when I started making serious money. When I really specialized. I took on 8 larger SaaS projects, building multi tenant platforms with Cl/CD pipelines. My dad also ran parallel joint ventures in equity trades and short term crypto which added a more money. Taxes became a lot more complex so I just let my family's accountant do evrything for me. I was now a working professional and also had several expensive cloud subscriptions and development tools. And they were again treated as deductions of the IT Act. My accountant also routed some international invoices via USD accounts to avoid unnecessary currency conversion losses while he still declared all income in INR. After deductions the tax rate iirc was 10-15%.
Investment strategy at this stage became a lot more structured because I let
1. 50% in long-term ETFs / index funds - primarily S&P 500 (VTI, SPY) and NIFTY, NASDAQ based ETFs.. I am one of the biggest index fund shiller on the forum
2. 30% in direct equities in highconviction Indian and US tech stocks
3. 20% in high-risk high-pulls / crypto. Basically gambling.
Year four brought my US internship. Taxes were withheld via Form W-2 (11-14%). I am not sure about the exact
specifics but I think my accountant filed under a combination of student benefits, exemptions, exploited the Double Tax Avoidance Agreement(DTAA) treaty and some other loophooles to keep taxes minimum with low liability. Almost all earnings were reinvested.
The key takeaways from this thread should be
- Taxes will eat your ass so use deductions, professional expenses USD invoicing, and Double Tax Avoidance Agreement(DTAA) correctly. If possible let a professional handle this because it is complex, very frustrating and time consuming. I tried learning it but it is difficult.
-Keep expenses low and invest most of what you make. The main reason I was able to stack cash and not spend money on useless stuff is because my dad paid for evrything. So all the money i made ended in my own pocket so I could splurge on useless shit once in a while.
-Leverage Connections. Use connections and take advantage of any contacts you have. They are very useful in the professional world and come in mad clutch.
-Currency arbitrage made me earn a lot of money.
I know no one is interested in all this yap and is only here for a figure this is a rough estimate but I think if you include everything all my earnings in freelance work, my tech job and including dad's joint ventures and investment compounding total money I made is around ~$120-125k. Is it realistic earnings for a student? Imo yes. Not common but possible if you grind, wirh decent amount of luck and some push from an investor which in my case was my dad but it is a definitely on the higher side.
I started freelancing in my second year. I was mostly experimenting. I struggled to get clients and worked for peanuts for my first 10 projects. Like under $200-300 but it was still a big amount for me but then slowly picked up small MERN stack gigs on Upwork and Fiverr around 12-13 iirc building e-commerce sites, dashboards, and basic web apps. which brought in roughly ₹6-7 Lakh ($8k). This is the first big payment I ever got and immediately invested it in crypto like a gambler.
On this day 3 years ago I received my very first salary and did my first crypto trade
$1800 dollars was my first wages
looksmax.org
Being a student. I didn't have a huge tax burden but I filed under the normal IT slab and leveraged standard deductions which kept my tax rate around 15-16%. Most of this money I reinvested
Year three was when I started making serious money. When I really specialized. I took on 8 larger SaaS projects, building multi tenant platforms with Cl/CD pipelines. My dad also ran parallel joint ventures in equity trades and short term crypto which added a more money. Taxes became a lot more complex so I just let my family's accountant do evrything for me. I was now a working professional and also had several expensive cloud subscriptions and development tools. And they were again treated as deductions of the IT Act. My accountant also routed some international invoices via USD accounts to avoid unnecessary currency conversion losses while he still declared all income in INR. After deductions the tax rate iirc was 10-15%.
Investment strategy at this stage became a lot more structured because I let
1. 50% in long-term ETFs / index funds - primarily S&P 500 (VTI, SPY) and NIFTY, NASDAQ based ETFs.. I am one of the biggest index fund shiller on the forum
2. 30% in direct equities in highconviction Indian and US tech stocks
3. 20% in high-risk high-pulls / crypto. Basically gambling.
Year four brought my US internship. Taxes were withheld via Form W-2 (11-14%). I am not sure about the exact
specifics but I think my accountant filed under a combination of student benefits, exemptions, exploited the Double Tax Avoidance Agreement(DTAA) treaty and some other loophooles to keep taxes minimum with low liability. Almost all earnings were reinvested.
The key takeaways from this thread should be
- Taxes will eat your ass so use deductions, professional expenses USD invoicing, and Double Tax Avoidance Agreement(DTAA) correctly. If possible let a professional handle this because it is complex, very frustrating and time consuming. I tried learning it but it is difficult.
-Keep expenses low and invest most of what you make. The main reason I was able to stack cash and not spend money on useless stuff is because my dad paid for evrything. So all the money i made ended in my own pocket so I could splurge on useless shit once in a while.
-Leverage Connections. Use connections and take advantage of any contacts you have. They are very useful in the professional world and come in mad clutch.
-Currency arbitrage made me earn a lot of money.
I know no one is interested in all this yap and is only here for a figure this is a rough estimate but I think if you include everything all my earnings in freelance work, my tech job and including dad's joint ventures and investment compounding total money I made is around ~$120-125k. Is it realistic earnings for a student? Imo yes. Not common but possible if you grind, wirh decent amount of luck and some push from an investor which in my case was my dad but it is a definitely on the higher side.
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