Freelancers, pension payment window is closing for 2025

In my ideal world I’d be looking back at my entrepreneurial life and think “I’m so happy I made it a priority monthly save for my pension. I can see how it has grown”, and high five myself.

The truth is, many freelancers never set off the pension saving that the employer previously did for them, even when they have money in the bank. Recently I made a visit to a coffee shop in Södermalm, and got speaking to the baristas, and after some friendly banter we discussed money and pensions from the perspective of freelancers and entrepreneurs.
To keep it short, as we know self-employed humans cherish their time, here is the why and how to list to get going, as that is the most important thing in this process:

Why we should set off pension:

  1. We control the narrative as our own boss, be a good boss to yourself. This is freedom put into action, with an aim to have more freedom down the line. Your future you says thank you for taking time to create an automization!
  2. We work passionately and hard for the money, ofc we should have a pension like everyone else. Compound interest is real, now we let the money work for us.
  3. We are leaving money on the table, if we don’t use the dedicated yearly window for 2025, closing mid Dec, to save for our pension.

Action steps for setting up a pension as a company owner:

  1. Choose who to work with (see options below, or find whatever you need), these options are free of charge, as opposed many other banks that will charge you for setting up pension shop for you. Classical banks are charging you set up fees, yearly fees, cover charges for you entire sum, transactional charges etc.

    Here are some suggestions for Private pension providers with target funds, with no cost to you:
  2. Set up a company pension. Set off a lump sum for this year, or set up an autopay, the choice is yours. Both are preferred if you are doing it late this year.
  3. Invest in a target fund – index fund with low cost. Nordnet will set up a target fund targeting your pension age. This is the simplest way, let them set up something to get you going. I cover why index funds are thing in this index fund post (Hint hint, it has to do with Nobel prize winning research).

I am somewhere hoping that saving for my and your future should be as fun as playing a game. I hope we can mentally shift the way we feel acting on seemingly “boring” things can be made joyful, and connect doing something for yourself to entrepreneurial self care.

Hope this is helpful to you.
All the best
Heidi Harman

This article contains Affiliate links.
These are affiliate links which means i get some coffee money if someone clicks and signs up, and starts saving through my newsletter. And ofc I use both providers for my pension, as a UX person that has designer Bank systems, I love checking out different banks and their usability. I rarely use Affiliate links, but when I do, I have tested the service and use it myself and stand by it.

Thanks for reading How to money! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

About time

Between two kids under four and big projects to deliver, I discovered how Sweden’s RUT deduction and childcare benefits can completely change the game for parents.

In my latest Substack post on How to Money, I share what worked, what didn’t, and why using RUT turned out to be one of the best investments in our family’s well-being.

👉 Read the full story and sign up here for my “How to Money“.

Illustrated possibility

I started making some simple illustrations in Figma for my Substack Newsletter about money. Generic stock images just don’t do it for me and I know how to use Figma (recently acquired by Adobe).

While I’d usually use it for product development and UX it is also a tool I love to use for a variety of occasions. My old co-founder used it to make gingerbread house patterns due to its preciseness and simplicity.

Its collaborative and fast interface thanks to shorter load times runs on Web Assembly (as opposed to its competitors that were built several decades ago) and is the best thing since sliced bread for creating in the browser. I was lucky to live in the bay area when I found it early on and have been a fan ever since. Once you go Figma you never go back.

How to money, a substack.

I started a substack today. It’s about money, my reflections, and thoughts about my own mistakes, wins, and no advice. I think it’s funny how people would rather speak freely in Sweden about sex rather than speak of how they invest, earn, and make a buck or build a business. So here we go, let’s start with fundamental basics and move on to more intermediate subjects. Always remember, no matter how much money you have, if you don’t have any time or energy left, it’s not fun to play.

Head on over to Substack for a subscription https://heidiharman.substack.com/.

My lastest investment Layout easy

Layout Easy is a WordPress plugin that automatically suggests magazine like designs for posts and pages, targeting small and medium sized editorial publishers. It works with a wide variety of existing themes and integrates with the default WordPress editor, without the need for any code or design experience.

We are currently looking for smaller to midsize editorial publishers for usability testing. Please email info@layouteasy.com. We will set you up for a no code needed test. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Building digital fertility services in emerging markets

Building digital fertility services in emerging markets, an episode with Therese Mannheimer, founder of Grace health, a fertility health app acting a digital health clinic, targeting emerging markets, we round topics of female health, venture building and success.

Founder and CEO, is a user centric venture builder,  business developer and strategist with over 10 years experience of working with digital service and product development for Swedish as well as international companies. Prior to founding Grace Health she was the Head of Rn’D at the market leading health app, Lifesum and spent six years as partner and strategist at the global design firm Doberman. Therese has also started several other ventures, including Lissly AB and the Swedish non-profit Allbright. 





Swedish Pandemic numbers with Award winning journalist Emanuel Karlsten

We speak with award winning data journalist Emanuel Karlsten about the Swedish pandemic numbers, as he reports at hos blog in both English and Swedish.

☕️ Support Emanuel on Patreon

Emanuels bio
Journalist, speaker and advisor on digital media. He is the winner of the Swedish Grand national journalism award, 2020. Considered one of Sweden’s most influential people on social media, and a sought after speaker both on a local and international level for businesses across all industries and sectors.

Columnist in major newspaper Göteborgs-posten, and radio host on one of Sweden’s biggest radio shows.

Chairman of the Swedish Media Academy and board member of Göteborg Film Festival, the biggest film festival in the Nordics.

“Screw goals and focus on the value direction.”

Interested in digital transformation from a leadership Perspective?
We speak with Mathias Eriksson about how to lead businesses boldy in times of change and a pandemic.

Listen to our new @howthepod episode with the brilliant @MathiasEriksson on leading businesses through change, in this Episode with examples from Icebug.

Mathias Eriksson calls himself an applier/bastardiser of science. A Doer-Thinker. A practitioner. He is an entrepreneur with a handful of companies behind him. He started the awarded (60+ international awards, Gold Lions and Webbys among them) content agency Matter in 2009 and sold it in 2018. Before Matter he co-founded and ran furniture producer/incorporated art project Brikolör that made themselves famous offering a 300-year emotional and technical guarantee of their products. 

He is a founding team member of the AI-company Adverai and is currently active as a digital transformation specialist, helping companies lay the groundwork for massive automation through clever use of data, software, and smarter processes where HUMANS + MACHINES is the secret sauce.

Mathias started his career as an investigative reporter for Swedish Broadcasting and has recently picked up his studies in Social Anthropology and Science- and Technology Studies. He researches our current and future lives with the machines and how the new machine age influences culture. From time to time, Mathias shares some writing on Machines, Humans, and Science on his blog and on his Instagram.  

10 insights from Clubhouse

Clubhouse being a voice and app only social network, by invite only that can take an extended time to drip in to your email. Once in, here is a bit of the deserved hype about the app that mimics humans behaviour on the internet. Here are some takeawys from my first weeks.

1. Human Onboarding (if your lucky)
Upon entering, anyone you know will be notified to meet and walk you though the experience with someone you already know in a private room. Quite a refreshing approach to onboarding new users.

2. Partyhat for your first week 🎉.
Being a newbie is human, and finding your ropes during that period os indicated a patyhat/partypopper emoji. If you don’t know what you’r doing you are likely to be asked about your experience and a little bit more patience is given.

3. Browse around rooms, clubs and follow relevant people.
Browsing around your first rooms (anyone can create) and clubs (takes more effort to create)found in the Hallway, you might look at some of the room or club 🟢moderators profiles. Following any profile, will algorithmically show more content skewed to that profiles interest. Feel free to unfollow whenever you like to regulate, as well as leaving rooms quietly whenever you feel like venturing on.

4. Experiment a bit by starting your own room
I started a room and invited som people by word, there are no formal invites as such, even tho ones events how in the hallway to followers and in the calendar. After trying to record an episode via Clubhouse we realised that the quality of the room sound would not hold up, we recorded another episode in a classical podcast environment. The 1-hour session I held where Maryem and I spoke about how clubhouse works with a few people.

5. Clear formats formats win for larger rooms
Of course many more things are on here and new formats are tested endlessly from jamming session with worldly artists, to PhD BJ Fogg from Stanford University clearly formated 1 hour sessions on how to create more sustainable habits, where you speak for one minute about what works for you.

6. Terminology of the unique functionality.

7. Moderating:
The room creator, can share moderatorship by inviting people to moderating. Long rooms that last for more that 24hours, handoff moderatorship to the next trusted person. Trusted is important due to a moderator being able to throw you out of your own room. Not likely but can technically happen.

8. Hand-raising: If you want to go up on stage at the upper part of your screen, you raise you hand to ask a question, the moderator then might grant you access to the stage for further interaction.

9. Re-setting the Stage
New people come in, others leave quietly, every now and then moderators re-set the stage, meaning they mention formats of the stage, what the room is about, are we topic-less, or if the room has a name with a topic, whats the format. This allows new-comers to understand whats happening and is best practice.

10. PTA – Pull to refresh
There is now way to share images of text directly byt the networks leverages and incorporates with Twitter and Instagram, where direct communication is to be referred to the DM’s with the other plattforms communication functionality, Clubhouse acclimatises itself to the given ecosystem of existing apps and plays nicely.
What is used when people want to share an image is to change their profile image, and at that point “PTA” is used, meaning pulldown page to refresh (and show image).

These point raise many good questions for concept developers, business developers. How will the platform evolve depending on what new features are released, and how will this sticky new product be used, commercialised and grow over time. The best way to make any future theory is to be a part of it.

How Clubhouse works

Maryem Nasri and I have spent some time at Clubhouse, the new voice-only social network. How the pod is doing a talk on Clubhouse on Thursday the 21:st of January at 4pm (CET+1) which will also be recorded into a podcast.

Join in if you have a Clubhouse account to learn, what formats work, and what people are experiencing and what might alter in the space of social networks. See you there 👋

Stockholm: 4PM CET+1 (16:00 local time)
London: 3PM GMT
New York: 10AM EST
San Francisco: 7 AM PST

➡️ Sign up to get notified about new episodes:

How the pod Newsletter

* indicates required