You're absolutely right, those are the tradeoffs and it's a matter of lifestyle preference. Having someone to help with administrative issues makes a tremendous difference, by the way, but all I meant was to share my surprise at discovering that not being an employee could be much more stable than I'd thought, sometimes even more stable than being one, and that the source of much of that stability can come from diversification of clients and products/services offered, just as with an investment portfolio.

Btw I think health insurance is the biggest problem here, in the US.

Anyway I didn't mean in any way that being employed by a company was some kind of bad choice, not at all!