Think You're Charging Too Little? The Coworking Kitchen Moment

2026-10-13

It is Thursday, a quarter past twelve, and you are standing at the coworking kitchen waiting for the kettle.

Two desks over, someone you barely know is telling someone else about a branding job. Casually. Mouth half full of crispbread. She mentions her day rate the way you'd mention the weather.

You do the sum in your head before you can stop yourself. Then you do it again, because the first answer can't be right.

It is nearly double what you charge.

The kettle clicks off. You pour the water over the tea bag and say nothing. You smile at the right moment in the conversation, and you carry your mug back to your desk like a person who is fine.

The number you picked once and never looked at again

Here is the thing you don't say out loud: you can't remember where your rate came from.

You think it was a figure you saw in a forum thread. Or what your last employer might have paid, roughly, minus a bit, because you were new and nervous. Or just a number that didn't make your throat tighten when you typed it into the first quote.

It worked. Clients said yes. That was the whole test, and you passed it, and you never questioned it again.

But "clients say yes" is a strange thing to measure yourself by. Of course they say yes. Almost anyone says yes to a good price.

So you sit at your desk with the tea going lukewarm and a question you've been carrying around for months finally has a shape: Am I charging too little?

And right behind it, the worse one: And how would I even know?

What the doubt quietly costs

It doesn't announce itself. It shows up in small ways.

In the faint resentment when a client sends a fourth round of changes and you reply, warmly, "Of course!"

In the Sunday afternoon when you notice you're already tired of the week.

In the way you avoid looking at your bank balance after a month with two big projects, because you suspect it will look smaller than the work felt.

In the feeling that you are working hard like a real business but being paid like a hobby.

You tell yourself you'll sort it out properly one day. You open a spreadsheet, stare at an empty cell labelled "rate", and close it again. There are too many things in there you don't know: how many hours are actually billable, what a quiet week does to the average, whether holidays and sick days count, what your costs add up to.

It feels like a maths exam you didn't revise for. So you go back to the number you already have. It is familiar. It is at least yours.

The pause by the printer

After lunch you end up at the printer at the same moment as the woman from the kitchen. She is collecting a stack of pages. You are collecting your nerve.

"Can I ask you something slightly awkward?" you say.

She laughs. "Those are the best kind."

You ask how she came up with her rate. You expect something clever, maybe a secret. Instead she shrugs.

"I got tired of guessing," she says. "One quiet month I sat down and worked out what I actually needed to earn, and how many hours I could really bill. Not the hours I wished I could bill. It was a bit sobering. But after that I stopped feeling like I was apologising whenever I said a price."

That is all. No trick. Just someone who looked at the real picture once, calmly, and let the number follow from it.

You walk back to your desk with a strange lightness. It never was about being brave enough to ask for more. It was about not knowing what "enough" even meant for you.

A different kind of Monday

Picture a Monday a few weeks from now.

A new enquiry lands in your inbox at nine. A decent project, a client you'd like to work with. Before, your stomach would have turned over and you'd have typed a price, deleted it, and typed a slightly lower one.

This time you know your floor. Not a hunch, not a hope: a number you worked out yourself, from your own life, your own costs, your own realistic hours. Nothing in it is a guess.

You write the quote. You send it without rereading it six times. The reply might be a yes, or a gentle "that's a bit above what we had in mind." Either way, you're fine, because you know exactly where your line is, and you know why.

You finish the day on time. The laptop closes. Your evening is yours, and the nagging little am I underpaid? has gone quiet, because you've answered it.

That is the whole change. Not a bigger ego or a pushier voice. Just knowing.

One small next step

If you recognise yourself in that kitchen, with the tea going cold and a number you can't quite defend, there is a gentle place to start.

Know Your Rate is a free Excel workbook: a rate calculator that helps you find your minimum hourly and day rate, plus a clean, printable invoice template with automatic totals, a tax line and a due date. Pay what you want, including nothing. It is a tool for getting organised, so the decisions stay with you, and it doesn't replace a tax professional.

Take it, enter your own numbers on a quiet afternoon, and see what comes out. You might find your rate is fine. You might find it isn't. Either way, you'll stop guessing.

Get Know Your Rate – Free Freelance Rate Calculator + Invoice Template

An illustrative story, written with AI assistance.