Just to put a slightly different perspective on this.

When I started, over twenty years ago, if I took the yearly insurance cost and divided it by my hourly rate it obviously meant working X amount of hours to pay for it. If I did the same for rent, business rates, electric and all the other fixed overheads and my own wage, it all added up to X amount of weeks per year. Now add these weeks after the “tax free day” that people talk about and it left a few weeks per year as good profit.

If you do the same now it works out that I have to work just over sixteen extra weeks per year to cover the costs, plus the “tax free day has moved later in the year by about six weeks. The trouble being - I somehow now have to find an extra four months in a working year, and added to the tax free day it now does not leave much as profit at the year end.

I suppose the other way to look at it would be - what hourly rate would I have to charge now to only have to work the same hours as I did then, well at that rate I don’t think I would have any customers!

The main point about my little rant is inflation, every year the government say it is about 2 or 3% but the business rates go up 10 or 12%, electric up 24%, new registration fees are introduced, etc etc. This is the only thing that would make me do something different if I had my time again. I enjoy the work and have good customers but when I see employed people getting yearly pay rises, better benefits and fatter pensions I have to wonder was it all worth it? And if you want to be really depressed just try thinking about what the costs will be in ten years time and think about whether it is worth starting.

Graham