At what point do I jump to self-employment?

[YellowSubmarine994]

I'm a secondary school teacher working 4 days in school each week, plus one day off (where let's be honest, I'm still working all that day). About 6 months ago I started my own business and it's doing well. We've taken on three contracts each paying us £10k (about £7k to my salary and £3k project costs). They're all initially one year projects but have potential to be renewed, potential to pick up other similar clients elsewhere).

I want to either drop to more part-time school and half and half it, or at some point just drop teaching entirely. I need the freedom, the autonomy to decide when I can go on holiday or when I can pick my daughter up from school. It's tempting to just pack in the teaching job there and then and go for it. However, my sensible head also says it's silly to leave a constant and reliable income.

If I go half and half is it going to wreak havoc (e.g. what if my own business needs me the same night my school needs me for parents evening)? I've also found that I'm prevented from growing my business as often I need to go to a meeting for my own business but it's in the school day so I can't go. I could do so much with this business if I had the time to develop it and grow it properly, but teaching takes all my time and energy right now.

Am I being bananas here? Should I just calm down and stay a teacher with stable income? Should I completely jump ship and hope I don't wreck our finances if the contracts stop coming in or something major goes wrong? Should I try some weird hybrid but potentially they will clash and make both less effective?

Help a stuck girl out. I just want my sanity and my evenings back, and I want freedom and autonomy over my life. Am I living in a fantasy world here?

Can you afford to jump ship just yet? Do you have any backup income/savings which would see you through a lean patch?

Not as yet. My hope is now I essentially have double income we can build up a £20k reserve or so between now and the summer.

I wouldn't take any final decisions until you have that reserve, then. You can use the time in between to evaluate the feasibility of the three available options.

Don’t forget to factor in your teacher’s pension and the cost of replacing those contributions personally, plus tax and NI on self employed income so that you are comparing apples with apples. I know it sounds obvious but too many people compare their gross SE income with their net salary when doing the maths on whether to change.

Could you do supply teaching, therefore work around your business

People always think self employment is freedom it's not...husband has to work sick often cancels holidays and never makes kids stuff....often 7 days a week. Me...can't be sick, worked through cancer, can't do things with family in the evening 2 weeks off a year. The customer is king and the tax man.

3 customers are not many is it the same sector? If you lose one because they fail will it bring you down? £7k is not your income do you have an accountant?

Self-employment was like this for me the first time around. I went back to a FT job. I tried again three years later and it's infinitely better this time. I wouldn't have been able to get my head around it the first time but there's a lot to be said for building your business in a way that is sustainable, and doesn't require this.

There will always be downsides; but there are massive upsides, too. In you and your husband's cases, unless you're keeping drastically more than you would in FT jobs, the downsides likely cancel out the good ones - but that isn't always the case.

Sadly for me, I had to burn it all down to build it back up, but I'm glad I did it! There's hope, if you/he want to change it.

I couldn't have kept going the way I was when I was 7 days a week and constantly working. I have a toddler now and there's no way I'm missing things with him.

My husband's business has run for 40 years he's had 25 employees in the past unfortunately recession changed things along with Ulez....I'm now the only earner I've been se for 30 years but you still always need to think of your customer base and you're never Ill at a good time.

I like this idea. It probably makes sense to stay at my current school for now, but maybe next academic year that would be a good half-way point.