Glossary

Words, minus the jargon.

Short, plain definitions of the terms you'll meet around budgets, freelance taxes, job hunting and meetings.

1
1099-NECThe IRS form businesses use to report what they paid a freelancer or contractor. From 2026, it's generally required at $2,000 or more.
A
Applicant tracking system (ATS)Software employers use to post jobs, collect applications and move candidates through hiring. Greenhouse, Lever and Workday are common ones.
B
Bot-free recordingRecording a meeting from your own computer's audio, instead of sending an AI notetaker bot to join the call as a guest.
E
Envelope budgetingSplitting your money into "envelopes", one per spending category, and only spending what's inside each one.
M
Match scoreA number, often 0 to 100, that rates how well a job posting fits your experience and what you're looking for.Meeting minutesThe written record of a meeting: who was there, what was decided, and who's doing what next.
Q
Quarterly estimated taxesTax payments self-employed people send four times a year, because no employer is withholding tax from their pay.
R
Ready to AssignIn a zero-based budget, the money you have that hasn't been given a job yet. The goal is to bring it to zero.
S
Schedule CThe IRS form sole proprietors and single-member LLCs use to report business income and expenses. The result is your business profit.Self-employment taxSocial Security and Medicare tax for people who work for themselves. It's about 15.3 percent of most of your net earnings.Speaker labelsThe names or tags in a transcript that show who said each line. The technical name is speaker diarization.Speech-to-text modelThe AI that turns spoken audio into written text. It can run on a company's servers or on your own computer.STAR methodA way to answer "tell me about a time when" interview questions in four parts: Situation, Task, Action and Result.
Z
Zero-based budgetingA budget where you give every dollar of income a job, like rent, groceries or savings, until there's nothing left to assign.