Time to pack it all in....

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... People may also not be aware of the transaction reporting regime of banks and the direct access of regulators ...
My wife couldn't change an old £20 note because of money laundering regs. (7 or 8 years ago), she had to pay it into an account then withdraw it. She had worked for the same bank for thirty years. You can launder £billions, but not £20 notes. :)
 
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I'm trying to find a way of getting round to recommending that unless you have totally fallen out of love with wood, hang on to the main equipment as long as possible - it's not that you are going to go back to it professionally, but being able to saw, cut and plane even the most primitive piece of wood is in your blood now and will always be so. Keep a workshop - it's your 'man-cave', and just go out to create some sawdust every so often - just the sawdust !!
I agree with this, I’ve had friends who have sold up to go on to their next venture only to become disenchanted within a few years then had to pay top dollar to replace what they already had as they miss their previous life.
I wish you well in your new job Zed but would advise caution perhaps it’s me but I can’t imagine getting long term satisfaction from being employed.
 
every self employed tradesman I know are in new vans, got massive hand outs and had 6 weeks chilling out and are about to recieve anothe 80% on top of there normal earnings. Speaking to one guy last week who has a tiny lock up he reckons he's had £32000 in handouts and not missed one days work ...... how is this right, bloody madness.

I think a lot of folks are going to become unstuck in the next year or so Bob, I notice some big companies are already paying back what they have received before HMRC come knocking.
Of the dealings I have had with the hand outs by taking them you are confirming you are entitled to them, I’m sure HMRC will be looking into the books of every business that has received payments.
 
I find these days, especially in this covid era no one takes big cash
I think a lot of folks are going to become unstuck in the next year or so Bob, I notice some big companies are already paying back what they have received before HMRC come knocking.
Of the dealings I have had with the hand outs by taking them you are confirming you are entitled to them, I’m sure HMRC will be looking into the books of every business that has received payments.
I'd like to think so Doug, but they just don't have the resources to do that, they didn't before the pandemic. However that wasn't really my point, someone mentioned it before but most of what was handed out was legitimate, it's just that in my opinion a lot of people didn't need it.
So for example one chap I know got £25000 grant for a retail space but does 80% of his business online, he has never been so busy but appreciates an additional £25k dividend this year from the gov't, he has done nothing wrong.
 
good luck with your new lifestyle .....its clear that you and your family are already reaping the benefits.
At the end of the day its all about quality of life.... not how much we can earn and what we can buy with it.
 
I worked for Customs for over 30 years and would strongly warn people who are on the fiddle. As they say they always get their man. They will notice everything. Trends in income, the new van on the drive, nothing goes unnoticed and they can go back 6 years. What's more they will be more than aware of people abusing the system.
 
I've been trying to get into hobby woodworking for quite some time now, I'm almost there but space to work is a massive problem for me. I purchased some kit quite a while ago but never really got started and lately the bug has been eating at me to make a further push to getting going. The main thing is that I didn't give up the faith, I kept my small machines and have started collecting handtools the same as my late Father used to have and restoring them to usable condition with the intention of making a little bit of beer money as I head toward retirement.
 
I can see that through rose tints this seems a terrible shame but I laugh at all you guys imagining woodworking is a huge cash cow to be milked. you must be crazy. this shows that there's a limit to how long you can bob a long the bottom. truth is low skill with employees is the way to go. gardening...jet washing...cleaning gutters. woodworking is a lifestyle choice...thats it. would any software engineers ever dream of cleaning gutters as a career change? the really worrying thing is these businesses will disappear rather quickly when the covid pinch starts no matter how much money appears.
 
I can relate to this. I am a one man joinery business, got a nice little workshop with all the kit, have been doing it for years and like to think that I'm pretty good at it. Thing is it is your whole life, there is always something you need to be doing or sorting out. The theory is being self employed gives you the freedom but it actually works the other way round, I sometimes struggle to enjoy free time as I always have other things I feel I should be doing on my mind.

The thing I have going for me is I have a few good customers, I live in a nice area and am thought of as the village joiner so tend to not be short of work although there are a few back of the van types creeping in.

Most people don't appreciate the cost of proper bespoke joinery, I think many people would be surprised how little you make compared to what you have to charge.

I keep thinking about going to work for someone else but then I also think the grass is always greener. I kind of enjoy it when I get a delivery of rough sawn timber knowing that in 2 or three weeks it will be a nice piece of bespoke joinery in a customers house, hopefully to be appreciated for years to come.

Regarding Government hand outs I have taken all I can so far as I have had quite a bit of time off work when the kids have been off school etc. A decorator was proudly telling me the other day how he has been working for mainly cash since March so he has little money going through his books, he has claimed all he can even though he hasn't missed a days work.
 
Regarding Government hand outs I have taken all I can so far as I have had quite a bit of time off work when the kids have been off school etc. A decorator was proudly telling me the other day how he has been working for mainly cash since March so he has little money going through his books, he has claimed all he can even though he hasn't missed a days work.

This is my issue Doug (or soap box in some minds), first time around I got it, something had to be done. By now it should have been sorted, seems it's just handouts willy nilly...................
 
The theory is being self employed gives you the freedom but it actually works the other way round, I sometimes struggle to enjoy free time as I always have other things I feel I should be doing on my mind.
Once you work for yourself you give up much spare time because the customer has to come first, say no and they go elsewhere and probably never return so you go out of your way to please them.
 
This is my issue Doug (or soap box in some minds), first time around I got it, something had to be done. By now it should have been sorted, seems it's just handouts willy nilly...................
....and it will all have to be paid back by the rest of the taxpayers and our children....
 
After much soul searching I've decided it's time to shut down the business and start earning money in a much more regular and sustainable manner. to that end I've taken on a job working for a local developer as a Site Manager. Steady (and rather decent) money, weekends and evenings blissfully free, a company car and all that stuff - I'd be mad not to (or so I keep telling myself)!

Suffice it say that there will be some bits and pieces and machines coming up for sale from me in the marketplace. I'll be keeping the bench and the hand tools though. Maybe now it's time to perfect my hand cut Dovetails and finally use that Stanley shooting plane that's been languishing under the bench.

I can appreciate where you're at. I had my own business in the USA up until 2003, at which point I was offered a full-time teaching job at a furniture college in the UK, which gave me chance to move back here - I suspect I was at about the same age when that happened as you are now. Admittedly business had been challenging anyway, and income was erratic, so the chance to earn steady money was very appealing. It meant selling all my heavy machinery and just hanging on to my hand and power tools. I do wish now that it hadn't been a necessity to get rid of all the big kit, but stuff made to work in the USA isn't readily adapted to working in the UK, and then there's the cost of shipping! As someone else mentioned, I think it would be a good idea to hang on to your big stuff, if you can, because I find I'm hampered somewhat for working wood at home now without such equipment.

Still, the teaching job led to more responsibility and opportunities to grow in other ways, and I have been able to continue working on a part-time self-employed basis on and off since I moved back to the UK. Anyway, because of changes since 2003, more complicated than I really want to go into here, I now find myself in a situation where I've developed or acquired a few reasonable income streams from different sources, and I no longer teach full-time. So, nowadays, I'm part-time self-employed as a roving maker (of furniture, joinery, etc), although most of that work fell off a cliff at the end of March this year, but I have picked up small bits of consultancy, and published writing earns a crust, plus other bits of money coming in, what with me being, er, well ... sixty plus. And from time to time, like now for instance, I pick up some part-time teaching of woodworking of various sorts working on a PAYE basis.

What I hope I'm getting across is that this job you've taken may provide you with an opportunity and the time to explore other ways of earning a living through developing what's often called a 'diversified portfolio', something you can gradually work your way into over the next few years in readiness for when the Site Manager type gig needs, in your mind, to come to an end, or a perhaps unwanted or unexpected end is forced upon you. Slainte.
 
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the teaching job led to more responsibility and opportunities to grow in other ways, and I have been able to continue working on a part-time self-employed basis on and off since I moved back to the UK.
A brilliant arrangement for your students. They really respect someone who can do what they are being taught. When I started teaching we were all encouraged by the inspectors to have a piece of good quality work on the go in our workshops. When I retired there was no time to do our own pieces. None of the inspectors could do what we did and were only interested to see lesson plans and that our mark books were up to date.
 
A brilliant arrangement for your students. They really respect someone who can do what they are being taught. When I started teaching we were all encouraged by the inspectors to have a piece of good quality work on the go in our workshops. When I retired there was no time to do our own pieces. None of the inspectors could do what we did and were only interested to see lesson plans and that our mark books were up to date.
My teaching was in the HE sector and, as such, lecturers were expected to have a 'research' profile. In this case, that meant a mixture of ongoing professional practice, i.e., in my case designing and building furniture, exhibiting it, selling it, and so on, and increasingly as time went on, undertaking research and publishing papers, as well as collaborating with various academic initiatives. I'm no longer working in that sector, but still do some teaching part-time, as mentioned earlier, plus varied earnings through self-employment. Slainte.
 
Cooper said:
None of the inspectors could do what we did and were only interested to see lesson plans and that our mark books were up to date.

Boy, does THAT resonate. I worked through several inspections in my career (11-19, grammar school) and invariably the time needed to amass the volume of admin required far outweighed the substance of "contact time" assessing. The inspectors had become obsessed with confirming paper confirmation that Gove's latest brain phart was being "delivered". It was also common for an inspector to announce "this is not my subject" as they arrived, notebook akimbo, in my lab.
I can see that marks records reflected our diligence checking how things had gone, and that a teaching plan similarly showed our mastery of time and substance, but the skewed emphasis thereafter on 'making sure policy was being adhered to' made a mockery of " a well-rounded and fulfilling experience for every pupil".
Gove in particular, and his predecessors in general, tried to impose dogma and ignore or suppress the very creativity that good teachers brought to the job. It is no wonder that youg, talented, energetic individuals left in droves after just a few years -or less - disillilusionment, leaving teaching without the needed refreshment 'from the bottom, up'.
Sad.

Sam
 

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