Prosperous & Creative Soul Year 4

skint_spice

Garden is looking good SH!

beanielou

Well done on the decluttering.  

jwil

Good luck with it all!

Glad you had a nice time with family and managed to get the house sorted.  Garden is looking lovely

savingholmes

Thanks Lucielle, Skint and Beanie. 

I've bought one lot of insurance so far - for online selling, including product and public liability, cyber crime and legal risks. They have more questions on my submission for social media which will also include employer's liability!! I am going to delay the life coaching one for now I think and just start with these two. Just the first part is c£670 a year. I am seeing this as a 'bet on myself'. Have to speculate to accumulate. This is therefore a legitimate use of savings - and not fritter spend. I know lots of people would start without related insurance but I am too risk averse for that - and have seen what can happen and the damage that malicious / fraudulent claims can do - never mind hacking impacts.

I have also uploaded some info for the bank. Let's hope it's finally enough.

So next task is to set up my social media handles.

Merlin's_Beard

Good luck with the setting up of things!

LadyWithAPlan

Sounds like you have a great workable plan ! 

doingitanyway

Great plan. Great garden planters!

Humdinger1

Magnificent progress on every front @savingholmes! I've found that to be successfully self-employed, you have to take your own attitudes and thresholds into account otherwise it all unravels, often in record time.   Love Humdinger xx 

TallGirl

Great news on the business you are very risk adverse but seems a good compromise with that level of insurance to start with. When are you going to go live with sales?

Garden pot looks great so nice to have colour at this time of year. 

savingholmes

Thanks Merlin, LWAP, DIA, TG and Humdinger

2 insurances now in place. Possible third to come. I'm still waiting to hear back from my bank. I now have my social media handles at Insta and YT.

After @edinburgher challenge on the phone - I'm currently debating whether the extra phone is the best investment - or whether other kit is higher priority. I'll keep you posted. 

I have been pondering 'loss aversion' and the missed opportunities - and the difficulty calculating the second. So for example I can see what I would lose in pay and wider benefits including pension from starting a business and long term reducing my hours in my day job or quitting it entirely - the potential upside is far harder to calculate however which is why I tend to get stuck on fear of loss.

Whereas on paper it would make sense to stay in my currently role for another 5-7 years - if feels too much of a compromise and a loss of 'life'. My current plan is do my best to stay until after I remortgage at the end of next year - and ideally until my following birthday. That reduces my window to stay to 15-20 months instead of 56-70. So I need to do all I can to grow my skills and maximise my income between now and then.

I need to reduce my base living costs. If Ai is correct - I could get a retirement interest only mortgage - so instead of remortgage costs increasing by £200+ a month due to interest rates - my minimum payment could drop by c£400 compared to now or £600 compared to what it would otherwise be. I can overpay when I want up to 10% of the balance per year - but it would take the pressure off in the early years of working on my business. So that may be an option. I will also keep holding out in the hope of VR. 

I also got Ai to help me model the impact of reducing my hours on a phased basis. I get a pay rise in December - so I'm tempted to ask to reduce my hours by 2 hours then as I'd barely miss the difference in pay as I've not had it yet. I'll see how busy my job is closer to the time - but in an ideal world I'd drop 4 or 5+ hours a week but I can't afford that yet.

I feel tired today but I've had a lot of meetings. I need to try and get to bed earlier and hope I sleep. I may reduce my life drawing group to twice a month as it comes around so fast - and I struggle to complete my work hours on the day I go... but it's my main social. I'm debating whether I need to change things up a bit and try something new. I really want to find a content creation group to get involved with to help motivate me - so I think that's my next mini challenge. 

This weekend I get my hair done again - it's overdue to looking forward to that. Then I'm also going to go and see DD's flat for the first time.

TG - I did a subtractive charcoal self-portrait yesterday that I'm proud of though so my skills are coming along. Ideally I need to get in the habit of video recording virtually all my art so I can use it on reels etc and build a following. I'm still working on my desired products. I want to develop my top 5-10 merch ideas and start with those - as that's all Am**** allows initially while they work out whether your product designs sell... Longer term I want to develop courses and group coaching / webinars etc.