<div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 5, 2008 8:11 PM, Brian Doepke <<a href="mailto:bdoepke@verizon.net">bdoepke@verizon.net</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> <div bgcolor="#ffffff"> <div><font face="Arial" size="2">I have been tuning for a church twice a month for a year+1/2 without even a slight increase in fees.  I don't want to lose this client.  They like my work, we have a good communication and rapport....but I feel a slight increase is warranted with increased advertising costs, travel expenses and so on.</font></div> <div><font face="Arial" size="2"></font> </div> <div><font face="Arial" size="2">How would you handle this?   Or...would you just leave the situation as it is?</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Good advice from others.  I went up this year.  I either let them look at the total on the invoice, or have mentioned something when writing it out.  Something like "I had to increase my rates this year..." with or without an explanation should work.  Every other service and goods are up, so we must follow suit.  I haven't found UPS absorbing a loss of profit from increased costs -- they pass it on to me.</div> <div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>It's just more expensive to live with the value of the dollar decreasing all the time.  Because inflation decreases the value of the dollar, we really must increase our rates every year.  If inflation is around 4%, then you are losing 4% of your buying power by the end of the year.  To put that in numbers, let's say you make $1000 per week right now.  In December, you will still make $1000 per week, but your buying power will have gone down to $960 per week.  So we have to take that into consideration when choosing our rates.  (I don't know exactly what the rate of inflation is -- just using the 4% as an example.)</div> </div><br>-- <br>JF<br><br>