4 day working week with no loss of pay
- Thread starter Brian
- Start date
Ponty
pfm Member
You could substitute manager for customer.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
I'm not suggesting this is a general rule, but my own observations have shown me that a significant proportion of self-employed people end up in that situation because they are temperamentally unsuited to working with, or for, other people. For the same reason, they make lousy bosses, so tend to earn a living as one man bands, trading on whatever particular skills they possess. In these terms, self employment might be thought of as a mental health issue 
Weekender
pfm Member
Much easier to walk away from a Customer than a Manager.
But we are generalising glibly.
Ponty
pfm Member
Depends if you’ve got other customers and how many bills are in front of you. In 20 years of employment, I only had 1 bad manager, who was useless in every sense. I left and worked elsewhere.
gintonic
50 shades of grey pussy cats
Do ALL the employed get overworked, bullied ad harassed by their managers.
Weekender
pfm Member
No but you can fool all of the people some of the time.
And I notice you misquoted my comment.
So have continued with the glib generalisations.
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
I don't recollect ever having a bad manager in my whole working life 15 to 66. True some I didn't like much but we had respect for each other at work.
When I worked for myself I never thought of myself as 'self employed' as I was an employee of my own Ltd Company. I could wear many hats as needed and referred to those paying my company for my services as our clients. I worked on some fantastic projects and made wads of money but I did spend a lot of time living away from my family often abroad.
In the end one of my clients offered me a job I really couldn't refuse. Less money than working for myself but the opportunity to work on really big interesting and technically challenging projects. On each project I would have a different team some of which I had never worked with before. Never a problem as we all respected one another.
I stayed until I retired at 66 and worked the last 14 years from home from where I could host global meetings. Some went through the wee small hours if it included Asia Pacific. My last manager was based in Earth City and he had to host UK meetings in what were the wee hours for him.
The contractors I engage now for work that I'm too old and unable to perform myself are truly excellent. They vary from young enthusiastic people to the older more experienced types. However they are getting more difficult to find as many have left the UK so I nurture those that we still have.
DV
When I worked for myself I never thought of myself as 'self employed' as I was an employee of my own Ltd Company. I could wear many hats as needed and referred to those paying my company for my services as our clients. I worked on some fantastic projects and made wads of money but I did spend a lot of time living away from my family often abroad.
In the end one of my clients offered me a job I really couldn't refuse. Less money than working for myself but the opportunity to work on really big interesting and technically challenging projects. On each project I would have a different team some of which I had never worked with before. Never a problem as we all respected one another.
I stayed until I retired at 66 and worked the last 14 years from home from where I could host global meetings. Some went through the wee small hours if it included Asia Pacific. My last manager was based in Earth City and he had to host UK meetings in what were the wee hours for him.
The contractors I engage now for work that I'm too old and unable to perform myself are truly excellent. They vary from young enthusiastic people to the older more experienced types. However they are getting more difficult to find as many have left the UK so I nurture those that we still have.
DV
Cheese
Bitter lover
Try to walk away from, say, Waitrose if they happen to sell your Grandmother's Homemade Dijonnaise. At some point they will want to pay less and you'll not find any sleep for weeks.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
Would that nurturing include letting them work 4 x 8 hour days, for the same money as 5 x 8 hour days, do you think? Assuming that, for the various reasons upthread, productivity didn't suffer and might even improve.
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
The loophole used by the self employed to pay less tax than an employed person would pay for the same income. You were self employed.
The only amusing thing about covid was such people receiving less help from govt due to their previous ‘salary’ submitted in tax returns being £5,000pa or whatever.
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
Ponty
pfm Member
Quite right too. You won’t succeed in being self employed if you don’t manage your income to allow for rainy days, so that’s fine as long as the govt allow people to do this. Nowadays there’s really sod all difference, in fact effective tax rates of CT plus divs are often higher than tax / NI under PAYE. The main advantage is being able to manage when you draw income (over different tax years), which loops back to being able to cover for the rainy days.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
So how do you nurture a self employed contractor? Surely you take them on for a job, and pay them the rate they're due. I'm not sure how that is 'nurturing', that's all.
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
So far as HMRC were concerned I was employed although I owned the company. I paid tax and NIC but at the lowest amount acceptable at that time. The big money came from dividends that if I remember correctly were taxed around 10% at the time.
Its quite true that specialist work can come and go so it could be feast and famine. With that in mind I put a lot of grain into protected silos as I didn't want rot nor rats to get at it. I am still benefiting from those investments today in retirement.
DV
Ponty
pfm Member
Long gone. If you draw any div over the high rate income threshold (£50,270), you pay 19% CT plus 33.75% div tax, giving an effective tax rate of 52.75%. Going up in April (when CT increases), when I’m expecting many highly experienced and valuable resources to early retire / reduce the amount they work.
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
It was a long time ago. I've just realised it must have been around 28 years ago that I last ran my own business! Where did that time go?
DV
Ponty
pfm Member
Yes, that’s a lifetime ago in terms of work! My most enjoyable work days were probably about 15 years ago. Working for a great company and fantastic boss. Really knew his stuff and how to get the best out of people. Bloody demanding but always had your back. BlackBerrys came in, meaning working hours became waking hours, particularly with different time zones and US paymasters. Never any discussion about hours worked, it just didn’t come into it, we were there to hit our goals, simple as that. Great times.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
Lucky you, Lewis. I had three Gas Safe plumbers in recently to advise and quote for a pretty major overhaul (new boiler, cylinder, rad + extras). One didn't bother to come back to me, another forgot about the rad. and the third was okay, but followed up his email quote with a 1st class letter quote 2 weeks late for a higher price (£200+)!!!!!
The 4th chap (our preferred choice) who had done some jobs for me whilst employed by my regular, now semi-retired plumber has gone self-employed. Unfortunately he suffers from communication problems. Phoning him is difficult to unintelligible and emails simply don't get responded to. His quote runs out next week.
There's me thinking that a nice £4.4K job should be an incentive to a young, capable lad building his business. His quote was almost a part by part price list (unusual) which must have taken time. I'm both baffled and frustrated.
He’s probably too busy doing plumbing to talk to you. This is a common problem with people just starting out on their own: they don’t realise how much work their boss was doing just talking to customers and reassuring them.
You will probably get much better results from text messaging rather than phoning: if you phone while his head’s under a boiler, the call is not going to be answered, and he’ll most likely not call you back later (calling customers back is often a waste of time, as they’re out, away from the information you need to answer the question, or just don’t answer). Send the query by text, and he’ll see it later and you’ll either get a call back or an answer by text.
You will probably get much better results from text messaging rather than phoning: if you phone while his head’s under a boiler, the call is not going to be answered, and he’ll most likely not call you back later (calling customers back is often a waste of time, as they’re out, away from the information you need to answer the question, or just don’t answer). Send the query by text, and he’ll see it later and you’ll either get a call back or an answer by text.