Insurance for Freelancers - What Type do I Need? | Born to Freelance (2024)

You’re young, you feel free and you want to travel the world while earning money. Fun seems neverending – and so does your good health. However, we all know that, unfortunately, we all get sick sooner or later. And when that happens, we’ll be more than grateful to have health insurance.

I know, I know – Insurance talk is anything but sexy! But we freelancers have to take care of unsexy stuff – like insurance, taxes and admin work. That’s one of the downsides of entrepreneurship, right? So let’s have a look at what type of insurance a freelancer needs.

Please note that I’m not a lawyer or an expert in insurance whatsoever. Everything I’m recommending in this article is what I honestly think that freelancers need – and what I also have.

Four Basic Types of Insurance Every Self-Employed Should Have

• Health insurance
  • Paying a monthly insurance fee can get expensive, so we all like to think that, if we get sick, it’s still much cheaper to pay those specific costs than paying health insurance fees for years. And that’s right if we just get a cold. But what happens if we get really sick if we need a longer treatment? I know, I don’t wanna think about it either, but we have to, don’t you think?
• Pension fund
  • This insurance is so important – and we pay so little attention to it, just because we think we’re always going to be the youngest! A pension fund provides you with retirement income.
  • Do you know what can happen if you don’t save for your retirement? Well, you’ll most likely have to work your whole life! So you want to start doing something about it as soon as possible. 😉
• Disability insurance
  • With this type of insurance, you receive a monthly income if you’re unable to perform your work due to a disability. Now, depending on what your freelance business is all about, you may be thinking that there’s hardly any illness which could prevent you from working.
  • And that’s exactly what I said to my hubby! I was a freelance translator, so I thought that there was hardly any disability which could prevent me to type into my PC. He answered me with another question: “What about your neck?” That’s where I was sold (to him actually, he’s an insurance consultant). I often have a strong neck and back pain from sitting in front of the PC, so I really need disability insurance.
  • There’s always some kind of job you can perform, so you want to choose an insurance company who pays you an income due to a disability which prevents you from developing your profession – even if you could get a job at a groceries shop.
• Professional liability insurance
  • This insurance protects you in case of claims against a service or product of yours. This claim can be due to negligence, financial harm, personal injury or property damage, among others.
  • You may think that this is a type of insurance you don’t need; that it’s very unlikely for your – let’s say – web design services to cause personal injury or property damage.
  • However, imagine you deliver your service later than agreed, which leads your customer to postpone the market launch for the final product. Depending on which customer we’re talking about, this postponement can be translated into hundreds of thousands of dollars!

Do Freelancers Really Need Insurance?

Yes! Even if paying for “just-in-case fees” isn’t what we’d like to spend our money in, believe me, you’ll be grateful you have insurance once you need it. Coming up with the costs of a severe health issue or a financial claim would be a disaster if you haven’t enough savings for that. If you have an insurance on your car, don’t you think you should have also one on your business?

In my experience, these are the four main types of insurance that every freelancer should have:

1. Health insurance
2. Pension fund
3. Disability insurance
4. Professional liability insurance

Freelancers and solopreneurs are responsible for securing our future. Even if that future sounds far away!

If you need any more tips for freelancers, feel free to check out these posts with practical info!