Ideas needed! Finding 4 hours of work?

Rumpleskintskint

As I'm sure everyone knows, from April there's a 24 hour work week minimum in order to receive working tax credits. I'm in a bit of a... well... horrible situation at the moment!

I've been working 25+ (usually 30+) hours a week for most of 2011 in my job, however, my official contract is only 20 hours per week. It had been preliminarily suggested that my contract would be officially upped at the beginning of this year.

However, the company I work for announced in the middle of December (yaaay... just in time for Christmas...) that they're having a massive restructure as of this March - meaning that not only is my contract not being increased, but that there's now going to be a "strictly no hours over contract" rule meaning that I'm stuck on my base 20 hours a week, no questions asked, no room for negotiation. I'm understandably pretty angry at my employers, mainly for all but outright telling me since September 2011 that I'd be getting my contract upped (so I thought I was "safe" from the tax credits cut, when otherwise I would have had MONTHS longer to try to find a solution) and I am actively looking for another job with more hours so that I can tell them where to shove it... but, for now I'm looking for other solutions.

So, long story short, can anyone think of any way to scrape together an extra 4 hours a week doing... well... anything? That measly little 4 hour deficit is resulting in our household income coming down by almost £300 per month in April this year. I have a house to run, a 2 year old, and another baby on the way... it really is a bit of an emergency. I simply don't have £300 a month to lose.

EmmaC78_2

Could you try and get a bar job one evening a week? Or perhaps a cleaning job? They often take people on for just a few hours a week.

PassedAtFailing

Could you not clean the houses of people you know for four-hours per week? You could do it on a self-employed basis.

kitschkitty

Self employment, so long as it is genuine, it doesn't have to be very profitable.

some ideas: cleaning, Avon, Betterware, Kleeneze, Ann Summers, Partylite, Bodyshop @ home, ironing, dog walking, babysitting, delivering papers or leaflets, typing, mystery shopping....

Badger_Lady

I've got no idea whether it applies to your job or not, but in one of my previous roles that didn't pay enough I found an additional contract for the same company. So I would work in the postroom 6-9am, then jump on my bike to another office across town for 9:30-17:30. The two jobs were entirely separate - it was a bit weird.

I've also done small part-time jobs similar to those listed above:
- Working Saturday mornings in a shoe shop
- Fast food joint
- One evening a week at the cinema (that was pretty cushty - was mostly spent watching films)
- Supermarket early morning pricing up the shelves
- Bar
etc

Rumpleskintskint

kitschkitty wrote: »

Self employment, so long as it is genuine, it doesn't have to be very profitable.

some ideas: cleaning, Avon, Betterware, Kleeneze, Ann Summers, Partylite, Bodyshop @ home, ironing, dog walking, babysitting, delivering papers or leaflets, typing, mystery shopping....

I was considering something like Betterware, but wasn't sure how it would apply... i.e. would it have to be profitable to minimum wage standards (i.e. be making roughly £25 a week, the equivalent of 4 hrs X min wage) to qualify as 4 hours of work? I also have a number of web projects that have good traffic but are currently run as non-profit, though could potentially be profit making with a few tweaks (they have been in the past, but we made the decision a year or so ago to go non-profit) but, again, the income from that can vary quite a bit from month to month, although they certainly constitute more than 4 hours a week of work in actual "time".

Notmyrealname

Paper round?

Rumpleskintskint

Badger_Lady wrote: »

I've got no idea whether it applies to your job or not, but in one of my previous roles that didn't pay enough I found an additional contract for the same company. So I would work in the postroom 6-9am, then jump on my bike to another office across town for 9:30-17:30. The two jobs were entirely separate - it was a bit weird.

The company has gone completely insane, unfortunately, and have implemented a bizarre policy of: no contract increases or renegotiations, no hiring of additional staff, no overtime of any kind for anyone. My contract was supposed to be being increased to cover another staff member's maternity leave... instead, they're just spreading us more thinly. Note that this isn't a small company, nor is it one that's in trouble in any way - it's a multi-national (I won't mention any names, I've seen people get into a lot of trouble for moaning online ... ) that saw profits of several hundred million last year... it's a restructure motivated purely by greed and competitor profit margin battles.

A few of my colleagues are convinced that there will be a major rethink not too long after the implementation anyway - when they realise that it simply won't fly. Obviously, though, I'm not just going to sit around and hope for the best!

corbyboy

Rumpleskintskint wrote: »

As I'm sure everyone knows, from April there's a 24 hour work week minimum in order to receive working tax credits. I'm in a bit of a... well... horrible situation at the moment!

I've been working 25+ (usually 30+) hours a week for most of 2011 in my job, however, my official contract is only 20 hours per week. It had been preliminarily suggested that my contract would be officially upped at the beginning of this year.

However, the company I work for announced in the middle of December (yaaay... just in time for Christmas...) that they're having a massive restructure as of this March - meaning that not only is my contract not being increased, but that there's now going to be a "strictly no hours over contract" rule meaning that I'm stuck on my base 20 hours a week, no questions asked, no room for negotiation. I'm understandably pretty angry at my employers, mainly for all but outright telling me since September 2011 that I'd be getting my contract upped (so I thought I was "safe" from the tax credits cut, when otherwise I would have had MONTHS longer to try to find a solution) and I am actively looking for another job with more hours so that I can tell them where to shove it... but, for now I'm looking for other solutions.

So, long story short, can anyone think of any way to scrape together an extra 4 hours a week doing... well... anything? That measly little 4 hour deficit is resulting in our household income coming down by almost £300 per month in April this year. I have a house to run, a 2 year old, and another baby on the way... it really is a bit of an emergency. I simply don't have £300 a month to lose.

Can you offer to work more hours for a lower wage so that your overall pay is the same?

KiKi

Self employment. You don't have to make a profit or pay yourself NMW. You simply have to be self employed and working 4 hours a week. For that you have the pleasure of doing a tax return each year which may show no profit or loss, but you would need to demonstrate expenses and invoices etc. Ironing for friends, anything like that.


KiKi

Rumpleskintskint

KiKi wrote: »

Self employment. You don't have to make a profit or pay yourself NMW. You simply have to be self employed and working 4 hours a week. For that you have the pleasure of doing a tax return each year which may show no profit or loss, but you would need to demonstrate expenses and invoices etc. Ironing for friends, anything like that.


KiKi

This is interesting; my partner does a lot of craft stuff (baby things, like material name hangers for bedrooms, customised aprons for toy kitchens etc.) and sells via etsy... it makes some money, but not huge amounts, although she definitely works on it more than 4 hours a week. It's more of a labour of love that makes a little extra money... she'd do it for free anyway. If that was registered as self employment, would it count? Are PayPal invoices etc. suitable for self declaration purposes etc., as it's all done online (both ordering materials and sales)?