I bill double for meetings. Suddenly was invited to a lot less meetings that I never needed to be in as a contractor. Perfection.

This is genius and I wish I had read this comment a long time ago.

There's no way my wife will go for that.

We bill for project management and work related meetings, but not contract and business development related meetings. So if we’re getting feedback for our performance, ways we can improve, or discussing a contract extension we don’t bill for those. But if we’re discussing the thing we’re building, or doing project status updates we bill for that.

We’ve never had a client push back on that.

Meetings before signing a contract are usually free. Mean people call them "exploiting freelancers". They would invite consultants to their office and try to pickup their brains. They usually asking for free estimation, or some other free work, in the best (and very rare) case they will ask your rate and shake the hands right at the first meeting.

There are very few people who would agree to pay even for the initial meeting.

After signing the contract, you can bill for all the time you spent working, meeting, thinking, answering emails or phone calls, or even being on standby or warming up a seat at a client site.

In case the client set up a meeting and then canceled it on the short notice, or worse, didn't show up at all - you can also charge for this if you've lost the opportunity to work on other things.

Of course it's best to discuss this with the customer before signing the contract, and if possible made it clear in the contract itself.