How did the budget affect me?

I managed to get a paper on the way to work this morning and try and diagnose how it might affect me. Obviously pretty much all of it will affect me at some point, but the short term gains and loses were what I was interested in.

There is a planned decrease in income tax, to the lowest for 75 years, but this is almost exactly offset by other changes in National insurance contributions and the abolition of the 10% bracket - so not much either way there.

The ISA limit has been increased to £7,200 - not a significant rise so no major benefits to be had there either

Car Tax (oh dear) - I was dreading this, but it would seem that at first glance at the CO2 figures of our car, we just scrape under being a group D, and the big hike in prices only applies to that group, so I might have avoided the increase to £400 in 2008!

The biggest hit for me is corporation tax on small businesses is rising by 3%, which is going to be around my neck until I'm making £150k profit a year

We will get some benefits from a rise in child allowance. With a big emphasis on being green (which we try our hardest to do at home) the "waste tax" is interesting. Out bin at home hardly gets full at the end of the week, so hopefully any weighed waste tax would bot be too hard on us.

1st Quarter Results

Well my little company has now been trading for 3 months and I've had to look at my turnover just recently. I also caught the latest installment from the Brazen Careerist, Penelope Trunk, who says that writing about stuff can help you keep focused on a long term goal or aim.

Well I'm just checking through my financial goals that I made over the new year period after reading the money tree. Things are going well. Its a milestone in the business (although a very small one) but it is amazing to see the kind of figures that I've managed to get in the first fledgling months. My personal finance plans are also coming along well - so I am officially still on track!

Start-up business

In June 2006 I left a staff position at a well known company to go freelance. Why did I take that decision?

I had, since I left university in 1994, worked in industrial automation for a number of companies both small and large. I had had the opportunity to travel extensively around the UK and occasionally globally. In 2000 I got the opportunity to work for Siemens - the market leader in Europe, in their newly formed integration dept.

Over the next 5 years I worked with some great people, many of who will be friends for life and I was exposed to many things that folks working at smaller companies never get the chance to do. So why give all this up?

One thing about larger companies is that they can be very cold. What I mean by that is that when decisions are made at a business level, the people making those decisions don't know the people that they will affect. We had some good, approachable local management who had the unfortunate job of telling us all that our division was downsizing to concentrate on a single industry sector.

Another company were interested in the purchase of the engineers and their skills, but I saw this as a potential step to the side or even backwards. If my hand was going to be forced, then I would make my own future.

After talking things through with the family (it is very important to get the buy in of the people you are going to affect), we decided that it seemed like a good time to break away.

Luckily I secured a position quickly and I signed up with a managed company, who would look after all my finances. I saw this as a quick start method of ensuring I maintained cash flow, but this wasn't going to be forever - I wanted my own business.

My initial thoughts were that I'd wait 12-18 months and then look into starting a Ltd company and gradually switching over, but a number of colleagues that I'd worked with at Siemens, also made the move to freelancing and went straight into the Ltd company route.

I registered my company in November 2006, and began making plans to switch all my contracts over to it before Christmas. It looks like I made the right move, because shortly after that the government stated their intentions for the future of managed service companies - and it didn't look all that great.

I'm now fully up and running and in full control of the operation. The accountancy I went with are fantastic and offered some great advice.

If I knew it was going to be this liberating I would have gone this route right at the start of the exercise, but as a newbie I just needed to get up and running. My advice to you if youy are thinking of starting up (especially in light of the plans for MSC) is to go Ltd. It might take a little longer to set up, registering with all the necessary bodies, but once thats out of the way its the better solution.

Have you got any stories about setup? Are there things I should be wary of in the next 12 months?

The Dream

So I'd put myself back at square one. If I was going to start over, what tools & methods would I use in my system - knowing what I've picked up along the way? How would I integrate these things? I started by imagining what the perfect set up would be. To have a creative, photography art based career, using a host of mac equipment. I'd work form a very well lit, open plan area with a studio (a little like this one from Flayfemouse). Probably in an old warehouse that I'd bought, had restored and was getting a second stream of income from the like minded individuals who rented space from me (as well as the large Costa Coffee franchise I installed on the bottom floor, next to the deli). There would obviously be free WiFi coverage in the whole building so that work could be done anywhere. I wouldn't have to spend as long in the car (normally 1 hour each way per day formy current contract), that would free up more time with the family. I'd know exactly what to do with my time from my well designed "runs itself" system (based on knowledge from 7 habits, GTD, the money tree etc) Now coming back into my world, this is not happening any time soon (if ever) - but keeping that ubermaclife in mind I am setting out to replicate it as best I can. In the coming weeks I will be adding more chapters in the start of this journey, including

• my exposure to macs and why I think they'd suit me
• my financial planning
• starting my own business
• my existing GTD system
• my existing computer and the applications I use
• why do I need to switch at all?

After all that I'm going to buy my first mac - the posts will come thick and fast at this stage as I learn about mac OSX and aquiring the tools I think I'll need to run my ubermaclife.

Saving Money

Following on from my readings in The Money Tree book, I spotted this post, which covers much of the same ground. Nothing too groundbreaking, but having it all there in black and white certainly kicked started me into action and I have now drawn up a plan to rid myself of "bad" debt. The trick is not to be unrealistic and set yourself a personal debt free day that is acheivable with the surplus income you have each month. It might take longer than you would like, but at least with the plan in place you will not be disheartened when the debt doesn't get paid off after a couple of months.

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