Been Away a while!

AquilaEagle

AquilaEagle

Messages
420
Name
Ian
Edit My Images
Yes
I've not been around much since March!!

I am back, maybe not as often as I should be, but well here is my story........

Last wednesday I took redundancy from my current job. I was employed by them for 10 years, and my area was undergoing a restructure, so my position no longer existed. There were other opportunities in the company but over the last few weeks I have been doing sums, sums and more sums, with the odd bit of contemplation and picking belly button fluff, and I came to the decision to take the money and run! :banana:

I get 6 months pay in lieu of notice (I was on 26 weeks notice) including the cash equivalent of my car buyout, health plan and private fuel (which I got bumped up to reflect my average spend over the last 2 years vs the standard number they put in), oh and I got a 3% pay rise backdated to September to boot (not too bad a negotiation I thought!). Plus the 10 weeks redundancy payment. Unfortunately the former is subject to Tax & NI because it is normal practice for my company to pay in lieu of notice and they reserve the right to do it in the T's & C's of employment (if they didn't btw it would be tax free up to 30k) but the redundancy payment is Tax free. :)

So I have a bit of money to become debt free (except mortgage) and live for a little while whilst I seek alternative employment or do something myself. (y)

What a first day out of work too :woot: it was lovely!! I mowed the lawn, tidied up the house (a bit of self cleansing i felt) and generally lazed about in the sun and did a bit of driving :D

I needed a step change in my career, i was bored in my role (3 years) and was finding it harder to get internal opportunities to move upwards any futher. So I'm now persuing a couple of opportunities, at very early stages with those, but also considering doing something on my own. What this will be I don't know. I might do a bit of freelance work, or consultancy. So if anyone knows someone who might want a bit of work doing let me know! :D My background is retail, and specifically commercial / trading and marketing.

I have to do some hunting around now, and find out what I'd need to do to set something up on my own, do I need to be vat registered, have a Ltd company, be a sole trader. Are there grants I can get hold of, tax credits, etc etc. lots of questions. :wacky:

Everyone I have spoken to says I have made a good move, and that it was the best thing they ever did, if they have done it. I hope this also rings true for me. :thinking:

So, my belt is tightening for a bit, but I am excited and looking forward to new challenges

Any advice / experiences greatly received!

I hope to be able to do more photography practice at last too and look forward to being here a bit more often :)
 
well you have the most important requirement for the task in hand......enthusiasm! Good luck and welcome back!
 
I'm sure you'll be OK Ian. :) Just a word of warning - you can get very used to staying at home. :D
 
Good luck, get yourself down to your local enterprise agency or whatever they call it these days they will have all the information you need about becoming self employed and about any grants etc.
 
Business Link, I think they call it :) Next week i start my serious stuff like that :)
 
Welcome back AquilaEagle. I have been through exactly the same procedure, about five years ago, the only difference being I asked for voluntary redundancy. Took me about four months to get the employment I wanted. Any advice?...loads but I'll only offer two points - as CT says, it is very easy to get house happy and secondly don't leave the serious stuff 'til next week, do it now.

Good luck and it's good to hear from you again.

regards
 
Hey AquilaEagle, sorry to hear your bit of bad news ... sounds like it is doing you a bit of a favour ! I was gob-smacked to read your story - it is almost a mirror image of what I am going through right now too.

Two fundamental differences I think;

1. I was not offered alternatives they wanted rid of me and no questions !

2. I am just finalising discussions on the Compromise Agreement and this means I do, at least receive the first 30K tax free.

We too are looking on it as an opportunity and, whilst I have managed to be quite ill for a couple of weeks we are quite philosophical in the long term !

What I don't want to do is to stay totally out of the income stream and start eating into the capital I have managed to leave with. I had April off on paid leave while the negotiations were going on and decided to take May off too - although I am starting to network gradually as we go.

Off to spain at the end of the month and, decision made while away I hope we should be able to crack on with all we need to re-start !

Anyway, didn't mean to highjack your thread just totally surprised when I read it.

Good luck to you in whatever you end up doing and stay positive.

Best wishes matey,
 
My company today announced 6,000 job cuts so I think I'll be taking voluntary redundancy soon, I was going to be looking around anyway so maybe this will give me the push to find something new. :exit:

Unfortunately with this amount of workforce being slashed there won't be much room for negotiation but I hear the redundancy payments are reasonably generous *heres hoping*. Good luck to all of you going through the same.
 
AquilaEagle said:
Last wednesday I took redundancy from my current job.
Click to expand...
Seven years ago I could have written that almost word for word. The main difference being I "encouraged" for 6 months to get them to make me redundant ;)
 
Good luck to you and hope you find something you really enjoy.
 
Welcome back, and good luck with whatever you decide to pursue - all the best advice has already been given(y)
 
If you go self employed AquilaEagle you need quite a large turnover before you have to register for VAT so on that front wait and see. There's no point offering to do the taxmans work for him (unpaid) if you don't have to!

Being self employed is hard work, much harder than working for someone else but also can be much more rewarding since you reap the benefits yourself. The downsides are you are never 'off duty' and unless you are very lucky you can forget holidays for a few years.

Whatever you decide to do, all the best with it. :)
 
Thanks for the wishes folks, I'd love to do the Self employed thing, even with all the hard work it brings, it is the rewarding bit I am looking for. Got a couple of meetings / network opportunities already planned in for next week :)
 
The really hard bit is keeping motivated and enthused !

Good luck with your meetings/opportunities ... kup ?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top