New to contracting - what rate can I expect?

[Lost]

Aploogies if people are sick of seeing / responding to this type of thread - had a quick search and nobody seemed to mind when it's been asked before Anyway...

I'm thinking of ditching the permie job in the new year (Feb / March) and going contracting and i'm wondering what sort of rates I can expect with my skill set. I'm looking for a contract in finance / investment banking in London (city) doing something C#/winforms/Java/c++/xml/sql (all the usual) related. Doesn't have to be london, but thats where the money is right?

My skill set in brief:

CS degree (2:1)
4 years in industry total, 1 year with an investment bank (not in london)
.net/C#, winforms, some whidbey (C# generics, partial classes, etc)
Java (More POJO than J2EE), JDBC, Swing, some SWT, etc
c++, c (don't see many c contracting jobs about!)
sql (sybase mainly), some Oracle, SQL Server exposure.
Plenty of Unix, Linux
xml, dom, sax, xslt, bit of web services (WSDL, SOAP, WS-I)

So, given I have not contracted before, what sort of rate should I be pushing for? Don't want to price myself out of the market, but I don't want to get f**ked over like I do in this permie job either...

Thanks,

Lost.

[threaded]

£60 per hour.

[castoff101]

first contract

I have managed to get my first contract at £300/day working with Lotus Notes and SOX compliance with the City. Took me a while to get this first contract!!

[Lost]

£60 per hour.

According to http://calculator.contractoruk.com/ir35-calc.php that equates to a permie salary of £105,245! (assuming outside ir35) which works out at £67,390 a year after tax (£5616 a month)

Frightening.

[threaded]

Frightening?

Don't worry so, after a few successful contracts you'll be able to get your rate up to something reasonable.

[BlasterBates]

Your experience is good enough but right on the bottom limit of what you normally expect, many contracts quote a minimum of 5 years exp.. Still worth a try. I would have thought anything between 350-500 would be possible. Quote different rates so that you get a feel. Sometimes a rate range is given.