Going self employed has been a real eye opener regarding how many systems you have to comply with and pay for just to be allowed the privilege of working off your own efforts to earn a 'living'.
The banks and the insurance companies have stitched everything right up between them. Add tax to that and fees for 'specialist' services the banks and government have made mandatory for small businesses like accounting and legal help and you're lucky to make minimum wage even grossing a grand a week.
I earn well under minimum wage working for myself, constantly scraping a few quid together here and there, but if I put my prices up that'll drive off any existing customers. I've had to give back about a grands worth of equipment to get out of a contract because I couldn't afford legal assistance to fight my case and pay £300 to an accountant for perhaps two hour's work to finalise the arrangement, my van is falling to bits but I can't afford to repair or replace it because of the price of diesel and insurance.
Without winning the lottery I can't see how it's possible to start your own business without either doing a second full time job instead of sleeping or selling your soul to a bank who will then take every penny you have in loan interest.
I'm lucky that the Missus earns enough to (just) keep the house afloat while I try to build my business up, but she has to commute into central London every day to do that, so has no social life to speak of, perhaps having only two or three hours in the evening to keep up with her paperwork and then relax in. When her contract runs out in December there's a very good chance we'll end up homeless if nothing else turns up for her, even if I work full time for someone else I can't meet all our bills on my own as our mortgage and bills are now so high thanks to the greed of the banks, the utility companies, the council and the food shops.
December's getting very close now and we're both feeling the stress, even I can't sleep some nights and I've never had trouble doing that before.
Couple that with things like subsidence issues with our house because of poor repairs before we moved in (Halifax who sanctioned the old repairs are just ignoring all my letter, thieving bastard insurance companies again!) and things aren't a lot of fun here at the moment. But neither of us can afford to go out and escape it even for a couple of hours because the TV license and house insurance is due which will take all our spare money meaning out tiny safety net won't be there if Debz doesn't get her contract renewed. Yeah, we could do without TV, but it's all we have to take our minds off the problems for a few hours a night.
We've tried to sell the car, but even for a few hundred quid, despite working well enough, no-one wants it so it looks like it'll just go for scrap. I'm even trying to give up my one bottle of beer a night, which is my only real luxury (The bike is sat in the garage gathering dust again, can't afford to replace the tyres or run it, would get a pittance if I sold it) as it'll save me just about enough to buy some materials with in a few weeks.
Every time I manage to get enough money together to improve either the van, or the house, or even have a night out, something happens that requires exactly that amount of money so I am nearly always constantly broke.
I try and go three days at a time without a shower to save money, I exist mostly on cornflakes, bread and cheese as anything else is out of my price range. Facebook is my social life as I can't afford to travel to see my friends in real life and I am absolutely sick to ****ing death of it!!
But that seems to be the price to be paid for having a job I enjoy and trying to get by on my own. I've spent years working for clueless middle managing pricks in dirty factories and if have to deal with someone like that again I may well end up in court on an assault charge, or in an institution as a drugged up zombie with acute depression.
I don't need to be a multi millionaire, all I want to do is get by and maybe see a bit of the world once or twice a year with my friends, that can be done quite cheaply so why does that have to be so difficult to achieve?? How come I can't do that, yet the companies in the building my Missus works in can afford to fly flowers in from Africa to put on their reception tables every friday?? How can an accountant at the bottom of the road earn more in a day than I earn in two weeks?? How can utility companies post record profits year after year when I can barely afford to buy myself food every week.
I don't think I'm alone in this situation either, there are plenty of seemingly comfortably-off middle aged, middle class people who are getting frighteningly close to developing world living conditions in what is supposed to be a rich country. But what can I do?? Write a letter to my MP? Go rioting and smash up TK Maxx? What will that achieve? I've never in my life felt so utterly wrung-out and powerless, there seems to be no respite from this financial and mental drain, and the people who we're supposed to take guidance from and be looked after by are the very people taking all our money away!
But again what can we do? Protest and get beaten by the Police? Write letters and get ignored? Withhold payments and get fined more money for doing so, then get arrested AND beaten by the Police? I don't know.
