Do you know someone who's war-chest ran out?

[administrator]

You're not Scottish are you?

[Old Greg]

You're not Scottish are you?

Looks like someone will be taking a little dip in the deep fat fryer if he's not careful.

[Bunk]

Looks like someone will be taking a little dip in the deep fat fryer if he's not careful.

Stick the heid on 'im!!

[DS23]

everyone's war chest runs out eventually.

[psychocandy]

Stop posting then.

BTW search for Psychocandy - that's what contractors do when they have no money.

Thank you SE. Although you dont have to have zero money to claim JSA of course....

Hey if it makes the warchest last that little bit longer....

[psychocandy]

My warchest ran out.

I moved house and had several months off when my first child was born, which left it depleted and then a year later the "crisis " hit and companies simply stopped spending money on the sort of niche projects I usually work on, and my fallback commodity skills were all but useless in a market saturated with people with far more experience in them than I had.

3 months later I was doing the shopping on credit cards, 3 months after that I finally got a gig in Germany, funded the move there and next three months on credit (had to, because it took that long to sort out a German VAT number and get paid again) and I'm still dealing with the fallout, which means I have a fair amount of CC debt I shuffle around on zero percent deals and a roughly equivalent amount of ready cash that should keep me going 4 months or so and growing. Once I have six months worth of cash I will turn to paying the cards off.

I wouldn't say my contracting career has failed, as when you average out over a five or ten year period I've billed amounts that permie management would envy, and I've never been bankrupt, claimed benefits, been unable to pay my bills, been forced to sell any of my collection of random tat or driven a car that wasn't made in Germany. So overall I'd say I'm doing all right, and I've learned a valuable lesson.

I had that when I was permie. Some bad overspending decisions.

A few years contracting sorted most of it out. Like you said, its toss up between paying off the cards and building up a warchest.

[psychocandy]

You're unlikely to be able to borrow a lot of money without offering substantial collateral such as a directors guarantee secured against your house.

Saying that - take a look at ukbusiness forums some day.

Full of people saying, oh no, I've spent the VAT/CT money and now I'm skint. The upshot is normally, close the company down and keep your head down. People seem to get away with it.

[northernladuk]

Saying that - take a look at ukbusiness forums some day.

Full of people saying, oh no, I've spent the VAT/CT money and now I'm skint. The upshot is normally, close the company down and keep your head down. People seem to get away with it.

Evidence they do it yet no evidence about who gets caught. I wouldn't assume that people get away with it for one minute. We don't see people getting caught, that is very very different.

For example, we see plenty of people pushing their tax affairs over and above the limit on here, but we don't see anyone posting they got caught or had to pay yet the news says

http://www.hwfisher.co.uk/news-a-eve...your-turn-next

This is evidenced by the fact that additional tax receipts resulting from tax investigations into SMEs, euphemistically referred to as compliance investigations, rocketed by 30% last year from £434 million in 2011-2012 to £565 million in 2012-2013. The increase in diligence by the tax authorities stems from the Chancellor's stated aim of raising far more revenue from the existing business tax structure. The target originally set in the Spending Review conducted soon after the election in 2010 was for a total improvement of £7 billion in actual receipts. - See more at: http://www.hwfisher.co.uk/news-a-eve....nKf5Ntud.dpuf

[evilagent]

Hopefully broadly on-topic...

How long would your war-chest last?
Will it keep you going for 6 months? 12 months?

What amount (in terms of time) would make you feel "safe"?

[DS23]

2 years. any lower than that and the it's running out.