Mileage
Posted: Thu 24 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, Green, Own Business, Travel, Work-related | 2 Comments »Gordon wrote the other day about the mileage he covers to commute, and the cost of fuel (among other things) and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while (by which I mean ‘way before he wrote about it’) but never really got round to putting into words. So here goes for another attempt.
At the moment, I’m commuting between home and Great Yarmouth for the current contract. It’s about 40 miles each way, so about 400 miles per week. That’s about a tank of fuel per week – and wow, do you notice how much the price of fuel has gone up in the last year. Hell, in the last three months.
Remember all the fuss and fuel blockades when the price of petrol first went over the £1 per litre mark? (The BBC story linked to there is from 2000 – I thought it was a lot more recent than that, but what would I know?) Well now it’s nudging £1.20 per litre, and no-one seems to be protesting or complaining at all. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?
When we moved up to Norfolk, one of the main aims was to be able to live a greener, more ecological/economical life. And in general we’ve managed it. In fact, the biggest part of my carbon footprint now is my annual mileage. The problem is that as we live in the back-end of nowhere, I have to travel to offices in places where the work is. It’s a fact of life – at least until I get my own business properly started, and can work from home. Then it’ll start working out for the better. But until then, I’m just going to have to keep on eating up the miles.
God knows, I’d rather not have to be doing this kind of mileage. But at the moment, I do have to, short of completely changing my employment, career, and salary expectations.
Organised
Posted: Mon 21 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »So, in a fairly busy morning I’ve:
- Sorted out the business account, and started the process for getting it all up and running
- Had one of the front wheels replaced on the car
- Finally posted off a couple of letters it’d taken me ages to write
- Posted off my 2007/8 Tax Return (Yes, Recorded Delivery)
- Confirmed an interview for Friday
and - Driven in to work
There’s a lot more stuff in the offing at the moment (and a site to finish off tonight/tomorrow) but at least progress is being made on a number of fronts.
Not a bad start to the week, really.
Business Banking
Posted: Mon 21 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business | Leave a comment »So this morning I’m sorting out a bank account for the business. It’s taken some time to organise (and the worry is that the bank haven’t actually sent me the meeting confirmation, I’ve just realised) so I just hope that it all works out well in the end.
Following on from this, and getting everything set up at this point, I then need to sort out business insurance as well, but that’s the joys of business.
And at least I’ve also got my tax return done now for the 2007/8 Tax Year. So things are all shaping up as we go along. I’ll probably write more once the bank meeting is over and done with.
This Time Next Year, Rodney
Posted: Sat 19 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related, Writing | 2 Comments »A couple of weeks back, I was having a conversation with a friend about what we’d do if we were to ever become lucky, and win the National Lottery. (Or any other ‘big money’ concept – so long as it resulted in having a large amount of money) At the time, I said I would probably just keep on working (after a small holiday) and that’s still true – I’d want to be doing my own stuff, and have the ability to not worry if no money came in for a few months, so I could spend time getting things to work out properly.
But then I thought about it a bit, and something else occurred to me. If I had that much money, I’d be able to do the other thing I’ve always wanted to. I’d still want to do my own thing – the writing, the photography, and almost certainly the websites – but I’d also do something completely different.
I’d take the time out from working (other than the bits I want to do, of course) and go do a university course in zoology. And then I’d go to do unpaid (or bare-minimum paid) work at either a zoo or down at Monkey World in Dorset, which has been my long-term dream for at least the last fifteen years. Which is a scary amount of time for one ideal role.
It’s something that I could only really consider if I had the money behind me to manage the course – which involves not really working (in paid employment) for at least two to three years. And that’s only going to happen by me either working my ass off and building up the finances to that level, or by winning a significant amount somewhere along the line.
In the end I know that a Lottery win isn’t going to happen – it’s something that’s so open to chance, the probabilities are too high for anything to base plans on – but the working plans are still coming through, and who knows, something might work there. At the end of the day, it only needs one idea to go big, and I’m sorted.
So – what would be your dream? And how would you go about getting there?
Extensions
Posted: Wed 16 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Charm School, Own Business, Work-related | 2 Comments »So yes, yet again I’ve had my contract extended with the current place of work.
Thankfully it’s not the Cambridge one any more, and I started this new contract two weeks ago tomorrow. It was only a short-term stop-gap thing initially which was supposed to end on Friday – but now they want me for a few more weeks while the system goes live on the Intranet.
I must be doing something right – after all, I’m getting the work done (not, as Gordon suggested, “making a mess of it, to keep me in work” nor as Lionel suggested, “working slowly to make it look like there’s more to do”) and generally fixing the problems that had been generated by the last person to be working on the project.
It also makes the agency I’m working through for this contract happy, as it gets them more money – and also happily works as a reference for a couple of the other things they’re putting me forward for once this one’s done.
So all in all it’s going OK, and I must be doing something right. If only I knew what… *grin*
Parasolisms
Posted: Fri 11 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Work-related | Leave a comment »Yet again, my impression of Parasol has taken a downturn. Which in itself is pretty impressive, because my impression of them wasn’t all that good to start with.
First of all (and this is going back a bit) I’ve always felt that I was getting over-charged, and not coming out each month with as much money as I should’ve been. Parasol have always strenuously denied this, telling me I was getting all the benefits of a professional umbrella company. (Stop laughing, you at the back) However, I recently received a notification from HMCE that in the 2006/7 tax year, I’d overpaid £1800 of tax – in other words, Parasol had screwed things up to the tune of £150 per month. I’m about 95% certain that they’ve done the same thing this year, too.
Wednesday, though, topped it off.
At 3.30, I got an email from them.
With effect from Monday 21st April 2008, your Parasol admin deduction will be revised to £87.95 (from £79.95) per month. This small increase has been introduced to allow us to continue to provide our unrivalled and market leading services along with improvements to insurance cover.
At 3.45 I got another email from them.
With effect from Monday 21st April 2008, your Parasol admin deduction will be revised to £95.50 per month. This small increase has been introduced to allow us to continue to provide our unrivalled and market leading services along with improvements to insurance cover.
Not bad – a 20% price increase in less than 30 minutes.
There was another communique at about 5pm effectively saying “Ooops, the first one was the correct price” – but all the same, it’s not exactly the most impressive way of doing things, is it?
Thank Christ I’ll be leaving them in a couple of weeks, once the business bank account is set up. Simply changing to letting the accountant do my payroll instead of Parasol is going to save me something like £50 per month. That’s proper money, that is.
Company Formation : Accountant Visit
Posted: Tue 8 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »All went fine yesterday with the visit to the accountant, I’m pleased to say.
Next step is the bank account, which is due to happen on 21st April.
In the meantime, I need to sort out a couple of bits with Companies House and Inland Revenue, due to a small bit of (to me) highly relevant legislation which means that I now only need to have the one director, rather than two. This also means that Herself can stop being a director, which seems to make her happy too.
Oh, and I also need to change the registered address to that of the accountant, which should also make life a wee bit easier.