When people talk about 25k a year on the cards, you clear about £368 a week after tax and insurance is that correct? now if you get a company van I thought you lose some of your personal allowance as well so that must knock a bigger hole in the take home surely?
If you live in area's like west London, you can earn a really decent living working for yourself, but once you start going out into the home counties the money starts to really drop off and the part p niceic logo on peoples van don't help the time served electricians.
That's why you can't beat labour only price work or agencies imo.
Broadly, £25k should be around £370 a week or so with the van. Not a lot really, when you consider average rent/mortgage, bills, food, clothing, and so on. No wonder folks really are better off on the dole sometimes.
The problem is that we try to solve economics issues with social solutions - and we can't. The two often are mutually exclusive. You cannot live the capitalist dream (make money, charge for everything, free trade at all costs) AND supply a socially beneficial society. It just doesn't work.
At some level or another, we need a system of politics, economics, trade, and community which meets the requirements of everyone - and the problem there is that won't ever work either, because the thing that stops it every time is human greed. We're not designed to settle for enough, when we can (try to) have more. We're designed (these days) to take whatever we can carry, and store the rest so nobody else gets it.
Okay, now that I have got my socio-economic rant out of the way, market forces being what they are just now, mid to upper £20's is about the going rate for an employed electrician in the average sense - in most parts of the UK.
Hourly rates don't drop off very much in any of the home counties - living is just as expensive in many parts as it is in Town, and in some ways more, if you have to pay for commuting in.
At least friend Boris has finally seen sense (a little) and binned the Western extension to the abomination that is the daily tax on our blood. However he's put the charge up for accessing the bit that still exists (for now) - it has reached a tenner a day as we all knew it would. A tenner for what, exactly, remains the question. The congestion charge only exists to penalise those actively moving trade in and out of the capital - because nobody in their right mind would drive in there for pleasure or leisure.
They have taken so much money from me over the years, it is untrue - and most of that because of silly, stupid problems - like not being able to pay the charge in cash (or not being able to stop within a mile of the shops that offer payment facilities), like not having the memory of an elephant 14 hours later when I finally get to a computer, like areas it isn't clear exactly where the charge starts and stops (yes, there are still many if you don't know what the cameras look like). Add to that bus lane cameras, speeding cameras, red light cameras, the cost of vehicle insurance the minute they figure you drive in town, fuel costs, parking costs, and you can EASILY spend more than you'll earn in a day just getting in and out of the jungle.
The alternative is to lug tools around on the good ol' tube and bus. Sure it's cheap, but boy, the crap you got through - no seats, no space, jostled, bumped, left a mile away from the job, and thoroughly fed up with the smell of BO by the end of the day - filthy passengers (and often you, time you've done a day too)......and the Blonde Buffoon is busy telling anyone that will still listen he's ENCOURAGING trade in the Capital. Yup, in the same way Fred West promoted sales of Shovels.
All areas have their quirks too - for London, the above is some, but other cities aren't much better - Birmingham has the M6 toll, and is enough to screw up the most sane Sat Nav system with it's road layouts, Cardiff and Swansea have the Severn Bridge toll, and a foreign language to cope with (I still think it's time the English gave the Welsh their vowels back). and Liverpool, and Manchester have the fact that if you don't get knifed just for getting out the motor, you won't have one when you get back............
Ok, none of it is really that bad, but the point is, we all have hidden costs to cover, even when we're employed, on top of the cost of living.
So I take the point fully that £25k a year is nothing money in this day and age.
Up until the late 70s or so, the cost of a house was around four or five times salary. Now, you're lucky if you can find a cardboard box on the Embankment for that money. Typically, an average house is now no less than eight times salary.
Per slice, bread is now more expensive than ever - a quid a loaf, over 300% more expensive in equivalent terms to the 80s - and the same with milk, and other staple foods.
Fuel - gas, electricity, water - over 500% more expensive in equivalent terms than the late 80s/early 90s.
By way of comparison - in the early 90s, I was earning an average of £45k a year, with a lot of damn hard work. Most of my pals were earning more like £12-£20k.
All of this is a long winded way of getting to the point that self-employment offers unlimited opportunity to make your own way, if only you believe, can keep consistent and dedicated, and can keep realistic.
As we have seen with some of the replies, though, one thing it isn't, is easy.
It is possible, if you want it enough, but don't expect it in eight hours a day, five days a week. And don't expect it instantly. And don't expect security. Or someone else to pass the blame to, or to take the responsibility, or to cover your ---. The reality is, it's you, and you alone.
Everyone finds a level that suits them, to be honest.
And I keep coming back to one or two possible solutions, though I am damned, at this moment, to see how I can make them work. Co-operative works, which is to say, some kind of buying group and networking across the UK (which this forum is ideally placed to launch!)....and the banding together, as I've said before, of related trades for the benefit of all of the trades.
Sadly, I sometimes think these are ideas that idealisitc as they are, will never fly, because ultimately we can't be bothered to make them work. I don't know.
Anyhow, sorry for the rant.....
