handyman matter – Latest handyman matter news – Home Educating Family Magazine GIVEAWAY!

Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 8:33 am

Hey Readers! I’ve been comin across some crazy stuff the past few days from a few different blogs around the web which I just had to share with you. Check em out below…

Home Educating Family Magazine GIVEAWAY!

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Hope you enjoy the read as much as I did and please if you have something to say, use the comments form below to let everyone know your thoughts.

Have a great day!

Handymen: How To Figure Out Your Hourly Rate

Charging the right rate for your handyman services may be the single most important piece of planning you do. Undercharging means you’ll have to work two or three times harder and longer than other handymen. You’ll also end up working for penypinchers and you’ll generally be respected a bit less than if you charged more. What you charge per hour shows how you value yourself. Charging a low fee in some people’s eyes automatically means you do inferior work.

However, charging a fair fee doesn’t mean you should take advantage of people. Bidding $150 an hour when other handymen in your area are charging $50 is going to cost you customers. Sure, there’s an off chance that some rich widow may think you’re the only one she trusts and so you get the big bucks – and that has been know to happen – but generally, overcharging is going to cost you business. What you want is a competitive, fair rate that will let you take care of yourself and your family and your customers. Another penalty of undercharging is you’ll inevitably end up doing less-than-excellent work because you’re either exhausted or resentful at being broke or late for another job.

Besides pleasing customers and yourself, another factor to consider when you set an hourly rate is where you’re going to be doing the work. City handymen make more than rural ones. If you have any particular skills that set you apart from other handymen, you can also charge more. Handyman work can fall into so many different jobs – if you have exceptional carpentry skills, but are still calling yourself a handyman, a job that would use or stretch those carpentry skills should maybe be quoted a little higher if you know you’re the best person for the job in your town. Just be fair.

Overestimating how many hours you can actually work is probably the biggest mistake made when calculating an hourly rate. Charging $50 an hour after you’ve been making $15 sounds like you’ve struck it rich, but consider this: You didn’t have to do the accounting, marketing or tax preparation for your old employer for free. You probably didn’t get paid for all the trips to the store for supplies, all the hours spent talking to clients before, after and during the work, and you probably didn’t get paid for all the driving
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time. Now that you’ve got your own business, that $50 an hour is going to have to cover all those things and more. Small business owners don’t get paid for vacation time or sick time or personal days, so your hourly rate is going to have to fund all that as well. Suddenly, that $50 an hour seems like it has to go a long way.

Let’s get specific about what you’ll need to charge. There are two parties we need to satifsy to find a good rate: You and your clients. We’ll start with your clients.

Find out what other handymen in your area are charging. You need to know hourly rates and get some examples of quotes they’e given for specific jobs – things like putting in a mailbox, or fixing a fence, or painting a bedroom for example. Try to get the hourly rates for at least three different handymen. Average the rates. That average rate is roughly what your prospective customers are willing to pay. Its OK to charge more if you know you can do a much better job than other handymen in your area. Charge less is you want to get more work faster.

You can ask the handymen (or handywomen… there are more and more of them) for their rates directly, or ask a few neighbors that have hired handymen, or call a property management firm. The property management firm (or a real estate broker) may be able to give you a truckload of info about handyman services in your area. Talking to a property management pro or a real estate broker might net you a job right away, and these people are considered the best kind of clients for handymen because they constantly need small jobs done. Get one of those folks to trust and like you and your business is well on its way.

To figure out what you need to charge (not what people are willing to pay, which was the first part of this), figure out what you need to make each month after taxes to pay all the bills. Include unusual expenses like car maintenance, Christmas and winter heating bills. Add 10% to that amount for savings/breathing room. Now, look up the federal and state tax tables for whatever your magic number comes out to as an annual income. Finally, add how much it will cost to run your business for a year. This may or may not include the cost for health insurance, the cost for an office outside of your house, and the cost for all the tools you’ll need to do your work.

Divide that annual income requirement by 12. That’s how much you need to earn per month. Assuming you can fill 30 hours of billable work per week, that means you’ll be working 120 hours a month. So divide your magic monthly number by 120. That’s the hourly rate you’ll need to earn. I also strongly encourage you to round that number up. Some clients don’t pay. Some jobs cost more and take longer than you thought. Things rarely work out exactly as planned.

By: Pamella Neely

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Pam Neely writes about how to start your handyman business and how to grow an existing handyman business.