Help For Newbie

[malvolio]

£61.89 a day to him, so at well under £10 an hour you can bet the agency is adding at least 30%, probably more - my guess is the client is paying the agency around £100 a day for him (is it a him BTW?)Anyway, no matter, if we don't know who anybody is, we can't easily tell which one is taking the michael out of someone who really doesn't know what they're doing. But to my mind, the umbrella is the prime suspect if they can't/won't explain to their client (note their client, they're the parasitic service provider in this equation) how they work their charges.

[partimer]

rough guess

I worry at what schools teach these days. Home economics anywhere ?
Anyway, I have no idea what scheme the guy has signed up to but:

a) Expenses are financially neutral. You spend it, keep the reciepts and get reimbursed (ok bit more to it like mileage allowance, etc. but let's keep it simple)
b) Assuming he's an employee of the brolly
22 percent tax band up to 31,400 (his rates not brilliant)
11 percent employee NI

so roughly his take home is
Gross - (33 percent)
+ expenses
- Brolly monthly charge

This is a rough guess. He could be getting stiffed for employer NI as well ...
Best bet, move to another Brolly and tell your agent you're not happy with the current Brolly.

[Shuttle]

I worry at what schools teach these days. Home economics anywhere ?
Anyway, I have no idea what scheme the guy has signed up to but:

a) Expenses are financially neutral. You spend it, keep the reciepts and get reimbursed (ok bit more to it like mileage allowance, etc. but let's keep it simple)
b) Assuming he's an employee of the brolly
22 percent tax band up to 31,400 (his rates not brilliant)
11 percent employee NI

so roughly his take home is
Gross - (33 percent)
+ expenses
- Brolly monthly charge

This is a rough guess. He could be getting stiffed for employer NI as well ...
Best bet, move to another Brolly and tell your agent you're not happy with the current Brolly.

Some good advice from you guys.

When an agent call's to offer a job with a set daily rate, is this figure usually negotiable?

[Lucifer Box]

When an agent call's to offer a job with a set daily rate, is this figure usually negotiable?

Yes. If you are the right person for the job and the client wants you, they will negotiate (and at £60/day, I should think so too). The agent will tell you the client is not prepared to negotiate, but they are, naturally enough, trying to protect their commission and avoid the hassle. You have to be pushy and be prepared to tell the agent you're walking if you don't get the rate you're asking for.

Top tip: get the client site interviewer's details at the interview. If you get nowhere with the agent, you can phone the client direct and say you'd love to work for them but the agent is being obstructive. The agent will hate you, but who cares, it's the client that wants you. Beware also of dirty agent tricks such as telling the client you're no longer interested in the position.

[Numptycorner]

I worry at what schools teach these days. Home economics anywhere ?
.

I thought Home Economics was cooking?

[partimer]

old school

NC,

We're showing our age here...
Back when majority of kids use to leave school at 16 (and not go on to A-levels), they were ill prepared for the real world. I don't know about your school but the one I went to had everything about looking after your home into a subject called home economics.

This included weekly budgeting (given a pound how much eggs, fish, bread you could buy) when there use to be 240p in a pound (let's not talk about the Shilling). Learning about how much interest you would get on your bank account. Where I learnt the difference between simple and compound interest. Yes cooking (nutrition) was also lumped into that subject but you get the drift of what schools were trying to teach.

I guess these topics no longer need to be taught since nobody has saving with free credit cards. No need to know about nutrition since we pop everything into a microwave. Etc. etc.

Don't get me started because I'll go on about slide rulers, log tables and protractors

[Lucifer Box]

This included weekly budgeting (given a pound how much eggs, fish, bread you could buy) when there use to be 240p in a pound

There used to be 240d in the pound (a hang over from Roman times, d = denarius). P's are one of these annoying Johnny come lately currencies, a bit like Euros.

Lucifer in "annoying pedantic git so no change there" mode