Freelancing matters

In my most recent blog post I wrote of how freelancing seems at last to be working for me , and I have a steady flow of work. Not high paying jobs, but even so a steady flow of regular work. One of the most obvious differences of freelancing is that certainly when starting out, income often has to be built up from several sources and small jobs, rather than going to work for one employer. Many hours will be spent not just doing the work and meeting deadlines, but looking for the next job or more jobs to bump up your earnings in addition to the one you are currently working on.

It might not sound ideal, I have friends and family who care very much for my welfare but cannot rejoice at my saying I have work, because they do not see freelancing as a real job. With one elderly friend, I have to constantly reassure her by saying that its a stop gap , just something better than nothing that pays the bills and I'm using it to get some work experience to get a real job. She feels so strongly that it cannot be real work and longs to hear I have got a job where I went for an interview in an office and I can answer 'yes ' to her question ' They do pay everything for you that they should …..? ' meaning tax and national insurance, sickness pay and holiday pay. I admit I have told a few lies....

However, freelancing matters and I believe it will increasingly matter for older and or disabled workers. Denied sickness benefits and with the decrease in the value of pensions and increase in the state pension age , many are and will find themselves unable to do the job they did, yet being forced by welfare reform to get a job. Freelancing is the way to make a job....

Do not be fooled though, freelancing does not mean that you will find it easier to get work or that indeed you will get work. Many freelancers just setting off are a long way from having a fully fledged business of their own, and so to start off may and many do, use freelance bid sites where they bid for the jobs advertised. These sites are good sources of work, many freelancers get all their work from them, others use them until they have enough clients not to use them and perhaps have built up a larger business, perhaps no longer working from a desk in the spare bedroom or home office. The way to find these freelance job boards is to Google lists of freelance job boards and look through them to see what you fancy and then discover over time which ones are most suitable for you. It is a case of trial and error. Some freelance boards are specialist boards for e.g. writers, others are general with several types of job .

A point to remember when applying for freelance work is that the same approach applies in some ways as it does to applying for a job with an employer. Just because it is freelance work, does not mean you will be offered it, there are as many, if not more freelancers out there as there are jobs and there is a wealth of advice online about how to write and win bids , in the same way as there is loads of advice about how to write a CV, apply for jobs and approach a job interview and of course gradually you gain more confidence and experience at doing so . Also, rather like networking to get a regular job , the more work you do and complete, the better ratings on such sites you can build up, which can lead to more work and actually being invited to submit bids for jobs because people have seen your profile and ratings .

Freelancing does matter in the job hunting world and will become increasingly significant to the workforce as people age and disabled people who once would have received sickness and disability benefits are forced to work , as well as being a very popular lifestyle choice for many. Freelancing is a real job...and it matters

Direct Debit at your peril...Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Direct Debit at your peril...Robbing Peter to pay Paul

The blog has been very quiet...and when it is, my regular reader know that the need to get a job or something that brings in an income quickly has become desperate, more desperate than it already is on a daily basis if that is possible.

Reader, do not be fooled, getting back on your feet and paying your way even when you do start to maybe earn some money or get a job with a salary, is never going to be easy after a long period on a very limited income. This is often because you might be, as indeed I was very proud to have managed to pay one bill, usually the one that shouts the loudest, the mortgage or yor rent, but very soon another comes hot on its heels . When you had a full time job and a monthly salary, you went to work at the beginning of the month and got paid at the end. In between, you paid the bills with with what you were paid and made the rest stretch as far as possible until payday. However, now there is nothing left to stretch. You may start to get money coming in, but there is nothing at all in reserve and money may be coming but it is a lower salary than in your previous job, better than benefits but not enough to support yourself...you have come off the list of being unemployed, only to join that of being underemployed.

Having a job does not immediately solve all your financial problems , especially now that so many of these jobs are part time or freelance...or zero hours contracts, when you don't know for sure if you will have work or not.

..It was Summer, and since I wasn't putting most of my Job seekers allowance into the pre- payment gas and electricity meters, somehow I managed to pay the mortgage and meet the agreement which pays my mortgage and the arrears, and if I don't pay, then I get an eviction notice.. What came next I guess, was a sort of euphoria...a feeling that I had turned the corner, and somehow next I had cleared the arrears on the meters. …

A premature feeling that you have turned the corner is a big mistake....and so can direct debit payments be for those on a very limited income with no savings to cover a change in the payment date or rate.

I had never thought that I would be able to return to any other method of paying my gas and electricity bills other than by pre-payment meter. However, not only was there the increased cost of utilities paying by this method,it costs money to be poor, but also that in icy weather I am housebound. The Job centre advisers doubted my ability to be able to meet the legal requirements of Job seekers allowance, to look for and be fit for work and as I have written about on several previous occasions, with partial sight, hypertension, a heart condition, arthritis, and a history of fractures, with an ankle held together with pins and a metal plate and difficulty with stairs, even though it is their job to hound me into work, they felt that I should be receiving disability benefits. However, my doctor is only one of many refusing to assist patients in benefit claims, and so he will not issue the necessary medical certificate. When it came to my being unable to go out in icy weather and the problem of how I would manage going to work, even the job centre said, icy weather in this country now can mean you can't go to work from October until April.

When offered the chance to return to direct debits for my gas and electricity, I jumped at it...However it had been some time since I had paid anything by direct debit. The last time I set one up, it took some time for the paperwork to be done and the first payment, usually went out the following month, which I hoped would give me time to save up and be ready for it......

Things have indeed moved on...the direct debit was taken out barely a few days later....and a direct debit for gas and electricity has also gone up as well we know.....out of my bank account went £97 , taking the next mortgage payment with it.....Also a problem with direct debits that I was either unaware of or had forgotten was that they can be taken by the claimant on any day and for any variable amount.

Of course what followed next was an eviction order being posted through the door since I had broken the mortgage agreement . To hold off eviction and having to go to court to plead before a judge to be allowed to keep my home, while beginning yet again a frantic and pointless search for sustainable work to enable me to do so , I put the property on the market and much to my amazement, considering the poor condition of it , I quickly had a buyer , albeit at a much lower rate than many similar properties, due to the overall state it is in and the buyer being an developer rather than intending it to be a home. Offered £120,000 ( some similar properties are fetching £160,000 , I was then told by the estate agent that the developer would do it up....and rent it out at the whopping £900 a month...almost three times my mortgage !!!....and what to do with three elderly and very settled cats ?

I have tried on past occasions to have the cats taken by a re homing agency....only to be told 'Mrs Hedges, we are inundated with pets and we only take them if there is a chance that you will abandon them....and you sound like a very nice lady who wouldn't do that'......would you ? Being implied in the lady's tone...and who on earth is going to say that they would ??

Certainly my cats are a complication in any rehousing plans in that they and their welfare almost has to be the priority consideration, but what about me ? It would be easier to be rehoused if I didn't have them, but even then it is almost impossible for a person with a badly damaged credit rating, who has either been evicted by repossession or voluntarily sold her home to avoid it, to be rehoused.

Councils are inundated with housing applications and yet have no properties available, and even if they did, often manage to avoid any responsibility for rehousing you by saying that you made yourself homeless by not paying the mortgage/rent.It is very very difficult to rent on the open market in a private letting with poor credit and in any case it comes at a price most people would avoid if they can. I was told by the estate agent, who valued my property that he could help me to find a flat to rent, but obviously at a price and would solve my credit rating problem by taking a larger than the normal deposit.I could apply to housing associations , but of course I would have to register and wait...and meanwhile the mortgage company said that they would not wait for me to be rehoused for longer than eight weeks. Since they knew I had a buyer on offer, they wanted the property !!!....so, the only possible answer was to frantically continue the search for freelance work that I could do from home.....a course of action that many disabled people denied sickness and disability benefits but unable to get or sustain work that they can do will be forced to at least try to take. ...For me, at the moment, it seems to be working..and I have paid the latest mortgage installment, if I can continue to do so, it makes sense to stay where I am.....