To think that tradesmen take the piss with their rates?

Yes. My late husband became too frail to cut the hedges and paid 'gardeners'* to do it. They kept putting our job to the end of the queue with the result that the hedge just got thicker and thicker and was never how it should be.

The final straw was when they kept putting off and we literally couldn't get out the gate. (NB I was willing to cut it myself, but DH was convinced that I'd hurt myself.)

In the end, I ignored his protests and cut the entrance myself. I then set to the rest of the hedge. It wasn't pretty, but I did it. I eventually got it licked into shape.

I never did admit to DH that I'd fulfilled his prediction of cutting through the cable...I'm afraid I was rather economical with the truth. I checked the price of a repair and buying a cordless hedge cutter was cheaper than a repair to the old corded one.

The hedge cutter has now paid for itself many times over. I do try to do simple jobs for myself, but some things are just beyond me.

I have tree surgeons coming this week and it's going to cost me £1,600....that's to remove one large tree, top another one and prune a crabapple. I was going to try to do the crabapple myself, but it's slightly too tall for me to manage without a stepstool. Once it's sorted out, I should be able to maintain it myself.

*I'm not convinced, given that the hedge was never shaped properly.

@Anyotherdude

Same generation. I was the first in my family to go to university. I was constantly hounded by my dad that I needed a degree to be successful in life. School were not much better and just wanted the stats whilst pandering to Blair's ideal. Nope I've ended up with a degree and in an admin job. Everyone around me doesn't have a degree in my sector and the few that have did it through their company. Obviously my career progression is my own standing in life not anyone else's. I was told university was the be or end all but in my family circles nobody was in those professional careers. I wanted to do an apprenticeship when I left school but was forced to believe that those where for the less academic (I'm not especially smart, highest grade B) and not for me. Instead of pushing me into university my dad should have stopped being an arse that hid away from people and directed me towards companies, social contacts and the like of the areas I was interested in. Ironically I now work in a similar industry to him. His employer did lots of father daughter days to encourage women to go into STEM. He promised he would take me but never did. Also at my current age he was earning a damn sight more than me without a degree.

I will not be forcing my children whatsoever to go to university unless their chosen career requires it. I think the days of moving away to university to experience 'life' whilst getting a qualification is beginning to change.

£40 an hour seems reasonable to me. Especially if you're paying for someone's skills built up over years. You're also paying for his availability. It might have been New Years Eve and he was giving up precious family time, or who knows? Up to him. You might have struggled to find a tradesman with availability when it suited you. The fact that he lives nearby makes no difference. He'll have other jobs an hour away, he just has to take the 'hits' and benefits where they come. I also have a small self-employed sideline for which I charge £40 to £50 an hour. It's desk-based and, to my mind, not hugely skilled - because I've been doing it for decades. (It's writing based - everyone 'thinks' they can write). But if someone employs me they know that I will do the work much faster than they can, it will be 'spot on', accurate, with zero hiccups, or liability. This is the same with your tradesman. I also think you should put up your rates, £30 for a tutor is cheap. I paid £45 recently for a maths tutor for my son. (oh, and I'm also employed part-time as a teacher, so do understand the demands of the job!)

That s a good procurement strategy. You are offering a fixed price contract to the supplier for an agreed set of works. They don’t have to accept. I work for an advice organisation and the number of people who embark on quite expensive works with nothing agreed in advance, not even an email, is quite surprising!

Thanks for this brilliant example breakdown. After pension, sick pay, holiday pay, it looks like the pay would be quite similar to a teacher. So the question is, whether the stress of being a teacher which can be horrendous, is worth more or less to an individual than the stress of being self employed which I know I couldn't be arsed with that kind of hassle and admin. Jeez i just had to do a tax return and I spent an hour crying at a spreadsheet. All for 4k of non emplyment income.

I’m afraid that ship has sailed - look what the OP (a Teacher, don’t you know?) thinks of people who acquire these skills.
All my DC only got “careers” advice to “Get a degree”, neither did and neither has needed one.
Whilst I have nothing at all against getting a degree, it should be either Vocational, a means to getting a professional job that genuinely requires it, or even (if the young person is able to afford it) a means of expanding their knowledge while learning how to live independently.
Many of my DC’s friends, hoodwinked into the “you must get a degree” mantra started by the cynical Tony Blair in an effort to reduce unemployment figures (as PP’s have already mentioned) have completed their degrees to a decent level, and still can’t get any jobs other than what would have been considered School-leaver entry level, back in the ‘80s…

This.
I've recently launched my own business and if I want to achieve the same net income as in my last job, with comparable benefits (pension, holidays, insurance etc.), I will need to generate an annual turnover that is roughly 45% over my previous annual gross salary. There are so many costs to factor into a business, even a one-man business, you cannot possibly mistake the invoiced amount for what they actually pocket- unless it's an illegal uninsured cash-in-hand operation (which I'd never recommend using!)

We've gone the other way! Have done lots of DIY and learnt that I love it, it's fun and creative and satisfying and it's opened our eyes to how much we were beholden to supply and demand.

I have a very good friend who's a carpenter and is working less but charging more since having kids and his take home has gone up as he's still in demand. He also says he prices fiddly or annoying jobs or jobs he just doesn't really fancy super high, like 3 times his usual rates. Then the customer is very likely to find a cheaper quote and not use him but if they still want to go with him it's a win win as he gets paid enough to make it worth his while. So I do sometimes wonder when I'm getting quotes if they are just looking at the parking and the steps and thinking it looks tedious getting in and out of my house so whacking on some extra for that.

I take a different tactic now of stating what my budget is for a job and the tradesperson can tell me what they can do within that. It might be sorry I can't help you or it might be that they can do the dangerous or specialist bit and leave the snagging to me. Or sometimes they've actually got started and then done a bit more than we agreed because they didn't have another job on that day which was a happy bonus. It helps us both know where we stand.

All of this, plus the lack of security when it comes to sick pay, holiday pay and availability of work..

DIY means Do It Yourself - no charge for DIY.

Tradies don't get sick pay, holiday pay etc.

Most tradies can't work full-time into their 60s and 70s.

Tradies don't get employer contributions to a pension.

Tradies' rates include travel time, fuel, van, insurance, training, professional membership etc.

Tradies don't do 8 hours a day of 'paid' work - a typical working day will include assessing jobs, providing quotes, collecting materials etc. That's before we get into the general time commitment of running a business.

Tradies have no guaranteed work. Some days/weeks/months will be busy. Some will be dead.

And if they're injured or have a sick child or a bereavement etc. then they earn nothing.

My point is, if you're paying someone 75 quid for an hour's work (for example) that doesn't represent an hourly rate of £75. They might have to spend several hours on the road that day, a couple of hours pricing up jobs etc. So for an eight hour day, £75 might be all they actually make - and that's before all the business costs outlined above.

Personally, I like knowing exactly how much I'll earn each month, not having to do unpaid work, having a workplace pension, and having holiday and sick pay - that's why I'm not self employed.

270 is not a rip off. 6 hours means probably the only job that day. Take off at least £70 of that for costs, that's £200 a day, max 1000 a week, max 52 000 a year. But that's with no pension or holiday pay or sick pay or days lost to quoting for work that isn't taken up. So actual take home will be much much less than that.

Nail on the head. Schools are almost forcing the more able pupils to go down the Uni route, which leaves the less able ending up in the colleges "learning a trade", but lots don't even have the ability to do that, hence why the trades suffer so many no hopers, both in terms of not being able to complete their apprenticeships, or those "dodgy" tradespersons who ply their "trade" without the proper training/experience/qualifications, aka bodge it merchants.

Historically, people with manual skills have been respected, going right back to biblical times, and certainly through the middle ages and the industrial revolution. It's a pretty recent thing that tradies have been looked down upon as lesser beings because they didn't go to Uni!

The scrapping of the Polys, and the virtual scrapping of a world leading adult education sector did untold damage, and then Blair came along with his crazy 50% target! It's all served to down-grade the trades as a decent profession and allowed the no hopers and con merchants to get a foot hold!

I remember my school days in the early 80s. We had a lad who was the stereotypical "top of the class" and it was kind of assumed he'd be one of the few (in those days it was a few who went to Uni), but he surprised everyone by leaving school with a clutch of top grades at GCE to be trained up as a plumber by his father. He got his own little van as an 18th birthday present and within a few years had taken over his father's customer base. He retired when he was 50 and lives in a million pound house in the "posh" part of our town, driving around in his Porsche. That wasn't earned ripping people off nor employing underpaid staff etc - he remained a sole trader just as his father was. He was just a hard worker, and because he was actually reliable, turned up on time, etc., he got massive repeat business and never needed to advertise. Neither his nor his father's vans were ever even sign-written. We used him once to replace our boiler and radiators when we moved into our home and we've never experienced a tradesman who was so ridiculously good - he cleaned, tidied and vacuumed at end of every day, and even painted the copper pipes he'd installed and built a lovely wooden frame and door to enclose the boiler - well and truly above and beyond and his quote was comparable with other local firms we'd asked to quote!

I find managing a multi-thread data migration with unmapped data fields an easy job
Most people don't, so I can charge quite a bit for it
I didn't find fitting a Venetian blind easy, so now will happily pay someone who does to do it

That’s like a tradesman saying they think teachers take the piss, what with the long holidays and nice pension.

Don't forget you have an additional cost to your employer of a % salary as pension, plus employer NI contributions in you salary package - the tradesman will have to fork both pension and NI contributions from his earnings (if self employed). He also has to travel to the job, van, van insurance (never cheap) tools insurance, and business insurance including public liability of several million (needed for his work type) - my just retired DH spent about £6-8k a year on all his various insurances so insurance alone is £20/day. He'll also most likely have charged VAT and will have to pay the difference between what he's charged and what he can claim back in costs and parts to the government. And he'll likely have to pay a bookkeeper and /or accountant or his wife to keep on top of the paperwork too.

I suggest when you have a job that needs doing to google 'how to (job needs doing)' and watch a few videos on You Tube. Simple tasks like changing a cord on a bathroom light switch are definitely easy enough to do yourself. Do you still have your dad about or know any recently retired helpful DIY type chaps? Befriend them, and get them to help you/show you how. You can often find classes on basic DIY skills, I think B&Q used to run them once upon a time, but here is an example: https://www.thegoodlifecentre.co.uk/diy-workshops-london/

There are now several 'Library of Things' where you can borrow DIY equipment to complete tasks which should keep the cost down for you too.

Really? Venetian blinds are an easy job. I've done all mine. Including buying some secondhand and cutting the width and taking slats out so not too long

> You're not paying for the hour, you're paying for the years of training and experience that mean it only takes an hour.

If more people understood that, the world would be a less miserable place

But OP has five years of uni education - how can you expect them to learn to do manual labour?

You provided the tools….why didn’t you do it yourself ?

Putting a blind up is sometimes a bugger of a job (especially if we're talking Venetian not roller) and often requires a specialised drill and bits

I did it myself ... once

Now I'm happy to pay someone to do an excellent job, with no fuss, in half the time it takes me, and they clean up afterwards!

You’re paying for a service…not an hourly rate.

Yes totally agree with this. Knowing what tools you need for each job is a skill itself and having the knowledge too. Buying all the right tools is expensive.

OP in your particular situation it sounds like a "friend" of yours has taken advantage. Now you know in future not to use them, but to use a proper professional instead, who would provide a quote.

On a wider note, DH and I needed a lot of work doing to our house so we decided to get into DIY as we couldn't afford to keep shelling out £150 every few days, as every job seemed to cost at the time. The DIY really opened our eyes to how much skill, how many different tools and how much time planning etc is needed for these jobs. I now agree that their rates are fair and will definitely steer my DS towards a trade if he doesn't seem to be academic.

and there’s the non paid time they put it:

• driving round to see prospective clients, i.e. viewing lots of places,
• understanding the brief (some might be more detailed e.g. garden refurb)
• and compiling and sending out quotes.

but YNBU OP, the way they make money can appear effortless and i’ve seen them with plenty of notes in their wallets