Half this room already earns something outside a permanent job: a weekend shift, a few hours online, a one-off paid favour. That money can feel like the same euro as a salary. It is not.

In this lesson you are participating in a costed comparison. You will take a €35,000 employed job, strip out what the employer quietly pays for, and work out what freelance income has to reach to match it. Most people guess €35,000. The real figure is higher, and that surprise is the point.

Three terms get blurred into one lifestyle choice. They are not the same. Read them carefully; you will need them when you choose an arrangement later.

Remote work can sit inside employment (you are still on a payroll) or inside freelancing (you work from anywhere, for yourself). The legal shape matters more than the laptop location.

You are going to cost what freelance income must reach to match a €35,000 employed job once PRSI, pension, holidays and illness are covered by you instead of an employer.

Part 1 — Employed versus self-employed on the payslip (stop after about 10 minutes)

Open the payslip explorer. It is set near a €35,000 annual gross (about €2,917 a month). The euro amounts on the slip are an illustrative teaching example only; real PAYE, USC and PRSI depend on your own credits, bands and the rates in force that year. Slide the gross if you want, click each deduction, then switch to the self-employed view. Notice who is doing the work your employer does for you when you are employed: PRSI handling, pension contribution, and the quiet fact that holidays and sick days are still paid.

Stop exploring after about 10 minutes and start the add-on working in your document.

Part 2 — Work the freelance-equivalent figure (about 12 minutes)

Copy this working into your Digital Workplace Trends document in the Strand 1.2 folder. Do the arithmetic yourself. Use this method and these fixed inputs so the class can compare answers.

Start with the salary you are matching: €35,000.

• Paid holiday to replace (classroom proxy for about 20 unpaid invoice days, not a full Irish leave-and-public-holiday map): €35,000 × 20 ÷ 260 ≈ ______. Freelancers do not get paid for days they do not invoice.
• Example sick buffer (about 5–10 unpaid days; the class model uses 10): €35,000 × 10 ÷ 260 ≈ ______. Nobody pays you when you cannot work.
• Pension you now fully fund: take a simple 5% employer-style contribution you would otherwise lose: 0.05 × €35,000 = ______.
• Example quiet-month and admin buffer: use €2,500 so answers match (teaching range about €2,000–€3,000 for insurance, accountancy, equipment and slow client months). This is a teaching buffer, not a Revenue figure.

Add them up:

€35,000 + holiday + sick + pension + buffer = ______

Write your total beside your first guess. If your first guess was €35,000, the gap is the learning.

This is a teaching model, not personalised tax advice. Employer PRSI and the different self-employed PRSI (and benefit) position are another real gap not fully costed in these four lines, so tax and PRSI systems still differ when you leave the payroll. Rates and reliefs change; the mechanism (you replace what the employer covered) does not.

Stop the arithmetic after about 12 minutes and move to your arrangement choice.

Part 3 — Choose an arrangement and name the trade-off (about 8 minutes)

Still in the same document, pick one arrangement you would actually take in the next few years:

• permanent employed (office, remote, or hybrid)
• freelance / self-employed
• gig-style short tasks as a main income

Write four short blocks:

1. Your worked figure (show the clear arithmetic).
2. What you added and why (the four add-ons above, in your own words).
3. Which arrangement you would take.
4. What you would be trading away for it. Name a real loss such as security, paid leave, a pension contribution, flexibility, isolation or irregular income. Be specific about the loss, not only the gain.

If you lean freelance or gig, remember that in Ireland you typically handle your own tax position with Revenue (for example a self-employed return) and you do not get paid leave as standard on platform shifts. This document is portfolio evidence for how digital workplace trends change the real cost of flexibility, not just the lifestyle story around it.

Talk these through with the person beside you, or sit with them quietly if you are working alone.

• If your first guess was €35,000, what did that guess leave out, and which missing piece surprised you most?
• Would you still take freelancing or gig work as a main income at your worked figure, or only as a top-up beside employment, and what does that say about how much security you actually want?
• If you chose freelance or self-employed, who handles your tax position with Revenue, and what happens to paid leave on a gig-style main income?

Optional 2-minute share-back: two people who moved off a €35,000 guess say what changed their mind. If one of these answers belongs in your Digital Portfolio, add a short note to your Digital Workplace Trends document after class.

As a class, weigh three ways of earning against the same criteria. The boxes are already filled from today's lesson. Your job is to set how much each row matters to you and notice which arrangement comes out ahead for your priorities.