FN-FORUM: The first six months..

date posted 15th August 2004 17:37


Afternoon all..

Just wanting to use you all as a sounding board really, so here goes..

I've been working for myself for coming up to six months now - and I'm
told the first six are the hardest, and the first two years are hard, so
the lack of cash hasn't been entirely surprising.. However, up until now
I've at least managed to pay myself just about enough to cover the major
bills.

But.. I've just finished doing my accounts, and it looks like after I
claim my last load of expenses (which I can't really avoid doing -
£2800's worth is hardware I bought to sell on to a customer and had to
use my own credit card for), I'll have about £400 in the bank of
available cash (the rest will have to pay the VAT man in a month or so).

Which leaves me in a bit of a quandry - I have one *big* job on at the
moment that will keep me busy up till the end of August and is worth a
reasonable whack of money (£4k, to be exact) - but knowing the company
it's for, it'll be October/November before I manage to squeeze the money
out of them.

So what to do in the mean time? I haven't really done enough work for
end-customers to get word of mouth going, what I have done has been
through other freelancers/small businesses, and there's nothing at all
on the horizon for next month - not to mention how I'll survive the next
couple or three months without any salary (I started this venture with
no financial backup sadly).

Realistically I'm faced with three options - beg/borrow money from
relatives to keep me going (which I may not be able to do anyway, as my
parents aren't exactly loaded, and it's not fair on them to be
subsidising me now they're heading toward retirement), get a second job
(and I'm not sure when I'd do that, given I already tend to work from
9am till 11pm), try and get my overdraft extended, borrow on the credit
cards or find business funding..

Does anyone have any ideas which my best options might be? Business
funding worries me - and given my lack of business plan, probably be
hard to get anyway..

Borrowing on my (already stretched) credit cards is easy, but limited
and very high interest.

Extending my (personal) overdraft might be impossible as IF say they'll
only up it once every six months..

Which leaves getting a job (that I'm not sure I could fit in and still
meet my own work committments this month) or borring from my folks..

Or alternatively I suppose I go back to the world of the employed - it
certainly was easier, and I was a lot better off financially :/


How *do* you make a living at this? It seems to me like I'd have to be
bringing somewhere between 4 and 6k a month into the company, every
month, to really break even and be almost as well off as I was before -
and I'm starting to wonder if that's physically possible as a one man band?


Ok, I'm not sure there were really any questions in that lot, or whether
I'm just venting to an audience :S Oh well...


Aaron