£2500 to start a business. What could I do?

Howll

I recently won £5000 at Bingo, split between my partner and I. The plan was to pay £2500 each off of our credit cards.

However, after yet another challenging and soul sucking day at work, I got to thinking how I could perhaps start a small business with my share of the money instead.

It’s a risk of course, but at the moment I’m just fed up with my current situation. I hate my job, I’ve no motivation.

I was looking into a small business franchise but I really don’t know what is “legit”. Anyone else have any experience starting up on this amount of cash? Any franchise recommendations?

And the big question, can it be done?

bris

£2500 is not buying you any worth while business franchises.


It's not a lot of money to start any kind of business. You may be able to buy and sell things if you can find a product not done to death on Ebay, but in all honesty I wouldn't give up my day job just yet.


To grow 2.5k will take a long time and that's is you still have it in the first 3 months. If you can find a niche market you have a chance.

Pennywise

Yes, assuming you're not going to give up your day job, you can certainly use the £2,500 to set up a sideline business which you may be able to grow if you "churn" the profits into developing the business.

One of my clients started a business with just a few hundred, bought some stock to sell on ebay (they spotted a niche that wasn't saturated), re-invested their sales into more stock, and so on, and then set up their own e-commerce website. After a few years, turnover was over a million, net profit half a million, and they sold it for around a million. All from, if I remember rightly, £300-£500 of initial stock. The thing is, though, that they didn't need to live from the business for the first few years, so could plough back all sales. They also "lived and breathed" the business, so no holidays etc - it was work, all the time, evenings and weekends. They also taught themselves how to create websites and how to do their own SEO etc.

I also had a client who had a £100k inheritance, set up a business with it and lost the lot!

So, yes, it's possible, but it's not just about money. You need the time, inclination, aptitude and ability too. Also, need a rock solid business idea - preferably something unique/niche and definitely not something everyone else can do.

J_B

Howll wrote: »

I recently won £5000 at Bingo, split between my partner and I. The plan was to pay £2500 each off of our credit cards..............

How much credit card debt do you have?

scaredofdebt

There's loads of ideas, but if you can come up with something original you could do very well.

For example, where I used to work there was a lady who sold cup-cakes once a week, I worked in a very large office with 3-4k employees. She was selling 400-500 cup cakes a day at £1-£1.25 each. I had a chat with her and she was making around 70% profit, less £50 that the office owner charged her for the stall. She visited different offices daily so was working a 4 day week (Monday day off) so you can see the amount of money she was earning, a very nice amount.

Main downside for her was she was up around 4 AM baking the cakes!

Set up costs for this type of business would be minimal, industrial style catering ie oven would be useful though. You'd probably need certificates such as health and safety etc.

lincroft1710

This thread is very similar to one which was posted some months ago

lincroft1710

Howll wrote: »

I have £2500 from a Bingo win that's just been cashed and is staring at me from my current account.
I also have £5700 of credit card debt, which is all on one card and interest free until September 2020.

I was going to pay it off the card right away, then from my May salary, I had planned to pay off £300 PM onto the card so I can clear it in 12 months (Save for maybe a bit less at christmas time)

However, as it's interest free, I just had the revelation that I could actually make that money grow over those 12 months. I've looked into an ISA and the amount seems to be negligible, then I thought about Premium Bonds, and although it's not guaranteed, there's always a chance?

Anything else I could do to potentially make that money grow more and pay the card off quicker?

Which do you want to do? Pay off your debts or possibly lose it in an unsuccessful business?

lincroft1710

J_B wrote: »

How much credit card debt do you have?

£5,700 according to OP's other thread

tacpot12

Paying off your debts and using any surplus to start a business would be more sensible, as your debts will just increase if you aren't earning.

Realistically no business is going to provide a living wage in the first two months of trading, so you need to be able to live for three months without any income in case you need to start job hunting. So you need to save enough from your job to be able to live for three months without an income and you will need whatever it will cost to setup your business. Very successful business have been started with a few hundred pounds. You only really need insurance, customers, a skill and perhaps a tool or two to start a business.

Percy1983

Firstly I would pay it off the credit card with the idea of if you need to buy for you business idea then you can use the credit card.

Do you have a skill, passion or hobbie you could make money doing?

I actually bought my 4th business for £5000, but it complemented what I was already doing to which I had the knowledge to push that business forward.

So in short right now all you know is that you don't want to do what you are doing, so the question is what do you want to do?

J_B

lincroft1710 wrote: »

£5,700 according to OP's other thread

:eek:

That's not very 'business like'.