I'm currently working 6 8-hour days per week at $100 per hour. That's $20k per month. That's about the going rate for a competent back-end developer. It doesn't require any unusual skills or knowledge, just self-discipline and a professional attitude.
That also doesn't give you a cash pile of $20k at the end of it, after you pay your current rent, pay taxes (higher as a contractor), buy food, etc. I'd estimate the cash pile to be maybe $10k? So his income from that one month was probably more like $30-$40k.
If you are outside of the US for more than 330 days in a 12 month period then you qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion: http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,.... It does not matter if you are earning money from a US company during that time. I actually did this one year by performing remote work for a US company while traveling around South America.
So, with a little planning, you can dodge at least the income tax portion.
Depends where you live, in the UK I pay a flat 20% (after income and expenses). My monthly costs in London add up to about $2k. So that leaves me about $15k. Not quite as much as the OP but give me a couple more years of experience and I'll be able to put my rates up.
Or telecommuting. I freelance remotely and make upwards of $100 an hour. It seems like a lot until you remember:
-- No job-related health insurance.
-- As a contractor, I pay almost twice as much employment taxes as full-time employees in the US.
-- Business is sometimes sporadic
-- your next paycheck is not guaranteed.
However, all that is perfectly acceptable to me since in the end, I'm my own boss. There are only a few kinds of job offers I'd consider at this point since I'm very happy with being a freelancer. But don't take the $100 figure at face value -- add in taxes, business cycle, time needed for marketing and accounting, etc, and it's not as much as it seems.
> As a contractor, I pay almost twice as much employment taxes as full-time employees in the US.
As a small business owner in the UK I have free healthcare and pay slightly less tax than I would as an employee. I pay minimal NI contributions (about 40 GBP per month, I think), 20% corporate tax on earnings (after subtracting expenses and a token 7.5k salary) and zero tax on up to 35k of dividends per year.
Yeah, yeah, rub it in. In all seriousness, the taxation of contractors is a big problem here in the US. And you'll love this: it's only the first 100,000 USD of contractor income that is taxed at double the rate of regular employees The doctor's lobby is powerful here and wanted to ensure that the majority of their income is not taxed as such a high rate since many (most?) physicians outside of hospitals here are technically independent contractors.
