Join in if you are self-employed and work from home

Purpleroses

and you mm, did you have a good bday?

moneymabel

yes thanks purpleroses ate way to much though!!

Horace

Thanks to the wedding forum on MSE, I may well have found somewhere to sell this mountain of wedding gear - some may have to be ebayed but I am thinking that this shop might get rid of it for me as they sell pre-loved clothes. Now I shall ring them tomorrow and find out what's what - they're not too far from me neither - just a short car drive.

cheekymonkey20

hello everyone.
broke up from ftjob for 2 weeks now.. mind u found on friday that the company might be insolvant :S
had all the business account card and pin and cheque book and also my business cc allthough i am not going to use it.
have to say though that natwest are a bit unorganised, didnt even realise i had been accepted until i recieved my pin and cheque book.
have a course on tuesday and 2 day one the week after. Gotta design some flyers this weekend so that I can get the word of mouth out. In a bit of a conundrum though, i can buy leads off the tinternet however they are about £30 per lead. Or i can flyer and advertise locally in the hope that someone calls. What do you sugest?

Horace

Advertise locally, I would say initially unless you have the money to buy leads off the internet.

cheekymonkey20

have credit there but as i said dont really wanna use that.. but i need £150 a month to pay for my licencing fees so i cant really afford to start off slow tbh.
I need £150 per month for that, also want £200 for myself spending money, then i want before sept next year £8880 to pay off loan, £250 to pay off overdraft £300 to pay off credit card £2500 to pay off mum and also some money to buy a decent ish car and be able to insure it for the year.

whatatwit

I too would say start locally.

Another self employed bod here and a queen of procrastination.

As it's the start of a new tax year tomorrow.....I will not leave everything to the last minute and I will keep all my stuff up to date as I go :eek:

cheekymonkey20

Right have designed a few flyers and made some ideas for alterations for the website. I have got a load of numbers to call a few local business re advertising, and some banks for introducers fees, all ready to call tomorrow. My plan is to do a load of research and costings with an action plan so that i can approach the director of the company to see whether or not he likes the idea.
I'm going to also look into advertising in post offices, social clubs, supermarkets, notice boards, shops, also flyering through local houses. Have found a printer who can do 10,000 flyers for £175 not bad eh.. three advisers at the firm so £60 each, dont think thats too bad.
Tomorrows my planning day, wednesday is my action day me thinks.

Wordsmith

Hello, All. Hope you are all well - there seems to have been some serious self-employment going on in my absence. Cheekymonkey20, I hope things are OK at home?

I spent last week clearing my parents' house as they have now moved to a care home. It was heart-breaking: first, that my parents have had to move, and sorting through the stuff they couldn't take with them really brought that home - it may not have looked much to anyone else, but, well, it belonged to my mum and dad; second, I would have loved to have taken a lot of effort to sell what I could so that they could have a bit of money to show for the half-century-plus of married life that they had to leave behind, but because we were working on a deadline it was a case of just getting rid of everything in the time available. We sold what we could, but made only about £100. Some stuff we gave away - I didn't really mind this, as they had good neighbours who have little money and really what we could give as a thank you that helped them was worth much more than the money. We had to take a lot of stuff to the tip, though, despite giving car loads of stuff to charity shops. That also got me down, as some things someone, somewhere would have wanted, but they weren't good enough for the charity shops.

Monday and Tuesday were really depressing. I had no radio and was on my own for most of the time. [And no internet all week. _pale_] I put a notice outside advertising house contents for sale. One lady came in and said she was sorry to hear about my parents; I reassured her that they hadn't actually died but had moved, then about five minutes later she asked whether we had had the funeral yet. Erm, we thought we would wait a while for that. But on Wednesday my sister came to work with me. Now, we have the same parents and had the same upbringing, but ... she has a very responsible and highly paid job, I get what work I can, when and where I can get it; she has a £450,000 house with no mortgage, I have two massive mortgages (long story for another time) and a hovel that's not habitable; she has a smart company car, I have an untaxed 15-year-old rust-bucket with 200,000 miles on the clock; she is happily married, I got divorced years ago; she goes on several holidays a year and I work seven days a week year round except when I am visiting my parents. What we do share, though, is a similar sense of humour, and we had quite a laugh working together. On Thursday my mad-as-a-box-of-frogs uncle joined us, which was even more fun. The first two nights I slept on the floor, but when big sis came down she let me share her hotel room, and, bless her, bought me dinner. Our uncle bought us dinner on another night. So, I saved where I could, but what with flights, car hire and loss of earnings, I reckon the week cost me about €1000 euros. :eek: Lovely sister gave me some money towards my phone bill as I had to make lots of calls from a foreign mobile at the beginning of the week. The perils of being self-employed, eh? I know you're supposed to factor non-working time into the amount you bill, but it never works out for me. And I had to turn down a proofreading job I was offered on Friday. Ho, hum. Visited parents on Saturday, and they are both poorly, so got depressed all over again and now feel really homesick as I want to be with them.

Got back last night - to letters from the Revenue and credit card companies - and worked (I'm afraid that I use the term rather loosely) in the shop all day today. The shop ghost was putting in a bit of overtime. All the staff have experienced feelings that there is someone in the shop but when we go to check, there's no one there. Today, this happened several times to me. One time I was convinced that I had seen something at the other end of the shop, and the feeling was so strong I went to investigate, and came face to face with :eek: ... :eek: ... :eek: a CUSTOMER! Gave me the fright of my life.

Was going to catch up on emails and things tomorrow, but other shop lady asked if I could cover her hours. Don't really want to, but need cash at the moment rather than invoices that won't be paid for a month, so have agreed. She is away all week and I was going to cover the other days anyway.

So, all in all, I have spent loads of money and made none in the last week. Nor have I made any inroads into progressing my business. Nor have I caught up on filing and accounts. But, hey, onwards and upwards. Self-employment is not for the faint-hearted.

Anyway, have a good week everyone. When I can grab some time I will do a bit of consolidating of information that has been posted to make it easier to find.

Horace

Sorry to hear about your parents, it is heartbreaking going through things, I can remember when my MIL passed on, we found all sorts of things even her wedding pics which had never seen the light of day before, we found that she went to the Birmingham School of Art and had kept some of her assignments like a book on natural dyes including recipes for making dye and wool samples that she had dyed herself. It really was surreal.

Am feeling perkier today (I have felt very out of sorts for the past few days), I received an email from a Castle in the Brecon Beacons inviting me to visit and for a reciprocal marketing agreement - well, I am not one to turn down the offer of a visit which reminds me - I need to book some more one to Dartington Hall in Devon and another to Armthwaite Hall in the Lake District:D plus I can arrange a visit to a posh countrypad in Hay on Wye:cool: I know its work but I also class these trips as mini holidays.