Licensed Tour Guide

mrkjd

I'm not sure that it is a very money-saving to use a Tour Guide in the age of smartphone / GPS / google etc but as retirement approaches offering personal Guided Tours through a licensed organisation such as Blue Badge seems a potentially attractive proposition. But it costs circa £3k for the course. Whether this is a viable "business" is obviously a complex question. Trying to pay off a mortgage and bring up a family on it would seem a stretch but as a way to supplement a pension maybe it could work.

But my question is how to pay that £3k course fee. Can I reclaim it against my future Tours business income which could actually happen sometime after qualification? Should I set up a separate account for the future "business" and transfer the money into it as a "loan"from an existing joint savings account we have? I've always been an employee so don't have any Small Business acumen and it is very early days in the process of deciding whether to move in this direction. Such a loan doesn't appear to qualify for a Small Business Loan or Advanced Educational Loan etc.

Has anybody on here any experience going down this route specifically, or more generally have any advice on how to "format" the course cost to best recover it through future freelance self-employment. 

TELLIT01

A decent tour guide will tell you a lot more than most phone apps, and there is the added advantage that you can actually look at the sites/sights rather than having you head down reading the app.  Training required to qualify as a tour guide would seem to be a reasonable business expense but how to structure it I will leave to others

Marcon

Have you tried https://www.gov.uk/grant-bursary-adult-learners? Also checked if your local council offers any help with training/retraining costs?

You can't claim tax relief on learning a new skill to help you start a new business: https://www.gov.uk/expenses-if-youre-self-employed/training-courses