No mortgage, but no job?

GracieP

drc wrote: »

It's not surprising really as when times are tough people look to god/spirituality for help/salvation.

Yeah, I've been thinking of starting a religion, look how great that worked out for L. Ron. Hubbard.:D And I could write a few crap SF novels which my husband could make movies of, so he wouldn't have to quit film entirely.

drc

GracieP wrote: »

Yeah, I've been thinking of starting a religion, look how great that worked out for L. Ron. Hubbard.:D And I could write a few crap SF novels which my husband could make movies of, so he wouldn't have to quit film entirely.

Just become a professional psychic. There was a Derren Brown episode where he did this and gave a load of strangers a 'personalised horoscope' or something and they were all gushing about how accurate it was and how he must be a real seer. It was the same exact horoscope for each person. Just shows you how easy it is to get into the human psyche and tell us what we want to hear...

bo_drinker

GracieP wrote: »

Yeah, I've been thinking of starting a religion, look how great that worked out for L. Ron. Hubbard.:D And I could write a few crap SF novels which my husband could make movies of, so he wouldn't have to quit film entirely.

Joking apart there are 2 new churches cropped up here in recent weeks, taken over tired buildings one was a working mens type club the other was a plumbcentre, the irony of it. I have never heard of eitherof the churches also another USA church built a new build and a factory close by, both threw a large amount of cash @ each building tidying them up etc.

amcluesent

Just start a boys-school in Eire, motto "We're not on the fiddle." Should do good business.

Mozette

amcluesent wrote: »

Public sector middle-manger in the NE is a cushy-number, cheap as chips housing, you're on £50K and her indoors is getting £30K as a teacher, can live in a detached in a village a commute into the 'toon.

Wow! Which public sector does he work for?

Davesnave

We're moving to the country to be more self-sufficient, but signifcantly, I have a pension that provides the bread & butter stuff, so any extra earning will be for the non-essentials.

We plan to continue selling plants we grow at various shows and markets, which we've done for years, so we know just how poor a return there is, even if you're one of the more successful nurseries. Many go to the wall after a couple of seasons, but with creative accountancy there can be certain benefits, and in the UK there's lovely tax credits.

Although we're going very rural, we're still 30 minutes from the M5/M4, as we are now. Another thing we know is that Joe Public is lazy & forgetful, so you have to go to him, not the other way round.

No idea how this would relate to Ireland. Have you Farmers' Markets there? Do you have any knowledge or aptitude for growing and rearing things? As us zay round yer, 'It bain't easy, m'dear!'

PasturesNew

Davesnave wrote: »

...We plan to continue selling plants we grow at various shows and markets...Joe Public is lazy & forgetful, so you have to go to him, not the other way round.

Get yourself a basic website (if you can't be 4rsed to do more), with all your stuff on it.. photos, downloadable order form if you're not ready for ecommerce yet, full contact details .... and religiously stick a small sticker onto every pot you sell that has your website address on. People will wander past, buy from you, get home, then want more, or their neighbour/friend might want to know who they got stuff from ... also, get a little card people can fill in with their email address and opt in permission so you can email them price lists/newsletters. The money's in the list.

Get a nice logo too (one colour so it's cheap to print.... I temped for a company about 25 years ago that had a glorious multi-coloured logo and their printing costs were astronomical).

nearlynew

GracieP wrote: »

If it wasn't for the recession I'd probably do something like set up a boarding kennels, but I can't see that being a big earner when people can't afford holidays. The same goes for a small organic farm. I think these industries are dependent on the public having a disposable income, once the going gets tough it will be Tesco value veg for most people. So what do people who make this type of life change do? Is it just a romantic notion that works in a boom time when you can get people to pay lots of money for goats cheese and handmade soaps? Are the alternative lifestylers starting to find that their "self-sufficiency" was as reliant on the boom as everything else in the main stream they opted out of? Or is is really possible to opt out of the rat-race.

You will always need an income, regardless of where you live.

A good business idea or even a high income from a pension is sometimes not enough to cut it in the country side. You need an affinity to that way of life as well.

The people you see on TV who "move to the country" generally fall into one of two categories:

1. Those that have cashed in on a high-priced house in London or similar and now think they're so loaded they can do anything they want.

2. Those with an existing little business which needs more space and decide to expand and relocate.

In both cases they are, more often than not, chancers who have relied on HPI to fund their ambitions and they end up finding that they have bitten off more than they can chew

lostinrates

I'm returning to the countryside when we buy: significantly a move we feel we could only do as a restart/newstart (with a good standard of living, at this stage in our lives) with DH's income, which he will be keeping.

olly300

PasturesNew wrote: »

Having lived in an area where a lot of people were moving for just such a change, there were only a few ways:
- be a public sector worker who relocated and kept their job (most popular)
- be a creative and negotiate a "work from home" deal with current employer (very few and far between)
- be in business and leave the business where it was, relocate to the countryside and simply commute once a week for essential meetings (usually they were Londoners so would fly there once a week)

You really need to "take your work with you", rather than turning up, getting the house and THEN trying to start something new.

I work and have worked with people who have done both of these.

The "work from home" are usually done by companies who want to save on office space. And you have to be willing to attend meetings with one or two days notice, and spend a week or two at company HQ or some where else around the world.

Those who come to London generally find for the first year or so they only come down for one/two days but then they find that they either have more clients or their main client gets more demanding so they are away from home 4/5 days a week.