[X4U] Question for the self-employed

[Jens Selvig]

I have been self employed since 1972. First doing commercial  
photography and most recently computer programming projects.

Leasing vs buying is a huge topic. I have a client who leased an iMac  
and some software through Apple leasing 3 years ago. He didn't pay  
attention to the lease agreement and ended up having a real  
nightmare. The agreement states he has to notify the leasor 90 days  
before termination of the lease. The leasing company didn't notify  
him of the fact that he had completed the original term of the  
agreement so he made 3 payments (they were auto withdrawals) before  
he realized what was going on. He is now in a situation where he has  
to make 3 more monthly payments before he can terminate the lease and  
the buyout is about 40 per cent of the original lease total. <sigh>

In general I buy my equipment outright. I have leased once and had a  
good experience doing so. I guess some might find some tax advantage  
in writing off the cost of the lease vs depreciation. That would just  
depend on your own cicumstances. ;)

Macs seem to hold value or at least they hold usability for a long  
time so reselling or reallocating what jobs the Macs are doing works  
out well. I have several clients who replace one third of their  
hardware every year. That means 3 years is the oldest machine any of  
their staff has to use. I keep thinking that one of these years we  
will have fast enough but it never comes around so buying the next  
greatest generation of computer is probably a life long task!

Now keeping up with software updates is a real problem compared to  
hardware anyway.

Jens






On Feb 15, 2006, at 12:19 PM, Mark Des Cotes wrote:

> Sorry for the tangent question but I'm just curious as to how many  
> of you are self-employed and if you are, what sort of work do you  
> do? Also, do you lease or did you buy your computer and why?