I hate working for an employer, I want to work for myself! What can I do??

[JulietBravoJuliet]

I currently have two part time, minimum wage jobs; largely because they fit in around school and are flexible enough to let me go to assemblies, parents evenings etc. plus one of them will let me take my son with me in the holidays.

However, I don't earn enough money to survive without some top up benefits and I really, really want to work for myself; I just have no idea what I could do!

My background is largely retail/sales. I worked for 10 years in a bank, until I was made redundant, have earned a decent amount as a manager when I was there, but, since having ds, have found myself in low paid jobs. I worked full time up until being made redundant, yet again, last year, but was really struggling with childcare, as I'm a single parent with no family support, and a son who is being assessed at the minute for possible ASD and has issues with being in groups of children, so childcare is a struggle as not many places will take him with his behaviour as it is :(

I'm currently working in a shop part time and a cafe part time, and I run both of them single handed on days when the owners are away. I don't know whether I would want the overheads of running a shop though, or if I'd be better looking for something I could run from home.

I need take home pay of about £1200 PCM, although I know I'll still qualify for tax credits, so that takes away some of the strain. I've thought about setting up a cleaning/dog walking type business, but not sure if that will bring in enough money?

Please help me brainstorm some ideas! I'm as miserable as anything at the minute and I need to take control of my life and start doing something productive!

Well you could dip your toe into dog walking by doing it in the evenings.

Set up a website, put out some flyers locally and maybe a few cards in newsagents or supermarket noticeboards/the library.

Just see how you get on, whether there's a market for it and your son could walk with you too.

I did the dog walking thing when dtds started in Reception, and am still running it now. It doesn't make a huge amount but you do have the flexibility.

This is our professional association's website.

Would anyone be interested in your management skills freelance? One of our regular clients is the reception/management/boring paperwork bit for about 20 small businesses. Their clients get the impression that the small business has fullscale office support etc etc, when in fact the whole thing's being done from (originally) home. She's now got about six staff, they all dress in jeans and bring their dogs to work with them (and I come along and walk them all) and fit their hours around school. Seems fantastic to me.

Someone I know who has a nut allergy has pointed out in the past that there's a HUGE gap in the market where it comes to chocolate selection boxes for those with nut allergies. Even if you pick out the ones with no nuts in the ingredients, they'll still potentially be contaminated.

? jesus !

The problem is, as I'm currently claiming some housing benefit, if I decide to go self employed, it needs to be something that will definitely make money as it's a nightmare proving income to the council without wage slips iykwim? Not sure how to get round that!

AlpacaLypse that set up sounds amazing!

Agree it isn't so easy to claim with self employment accounts as it is with a nice simple wage-slip, but it is possible, as I'm doing it.

When I first started I had support from a DSS scheme called New Deal for Lone Parents. Of course that was years ago and I don't know if there is anything like that running now. However I did get the help of an advisor who would meet up with me weekly, guided me through setting up bank account, registering for tax and NI, suggesting good advertising strategies, helping with claiming tax credits and HB, and there was even a bit of money for buying stuff needed to help back into work. I used it to pay for my first year's insurance.

Could you drop one of the part-time roles and build up the business from that?

Part-time sales from home could work for you I'd imagine, you just need a good enough package.

If you want to do something on your own I'd work out how much you need to earn an hour to give you a sense of what sort of roles would work.

So £1,200 x 12 = £14,400
You will only pay tax on the bit over the c£10K limit (although not sure what additional benefits would do to that) so I'd add - very roughly - £1k for tax & NI.

So that is £15,400 over 46 weeks (removing the holidays, which might not be feasible for all of them but work on that for now) which works out as £13.36 for 25 hours per week (have assumed 5 hours per school day).

You also need to assume that if you run your own thing (as opposed to being employed by a company that offers lots of flex and homeworking) that at least of 1/3 of your time will be spent on admin/business development. So maybe you need to think about 8 or so hours a week as not billable. So that makes your hourly rate needed £19.64 for 17 hours.

So to me cleaning (as a lone cleaner, running a cleaning business would be more feasible) is probably not paid enough based on what you want to achieve but something like being a Virtual Assistant or 'sales for hire' person might be.

Have you looked to see if there are any schemes that are set up to help people that are on benefits move into higher paid employment/set up their own thing? It strikes me as something the Gov would be in favour of...

Good luck.