A Solopreneur's Notebook

Both plans stop at the same number, which is why the usual comparison goes nowhere.

For my first couple of years on my own, bookkeeping had two speeds: ignore it, and panic in March.

A number that sat still for most of my life just moved: the 1099 threshold jumped from $600 to $2,000 for 2026, and almost no one noticed.

A client pays, and for thirty seconds it looks like I have more money than I do.

I've watched this category long enough to see the pattern coming: you settle into a tool, and one day it changes underneath you and points you at a pricier version of the same subscription.

The first January I worked for myself, I got two 1099s from the same client and spent an evening worried I had committed tax fraud by accident.

For two years I priced myself by dividing job-listing salaries by 2,080.

I sat on the fence for almost a year before I filed the LLC paperwork.

I treated quarterly estimated taxes like a recurring dentist appointment for two years before figuring out how the math actually works.