Hello eveyone, I hope this New Years Eve Eve is treating you well :)
I have been around these parts for a few years now but wanted to start a brand new MSE ID for my new journey, our journey to a new life.
A bit of background, I am 30 something male with a wife and 3 children all under 12, going back 7 years I had a great job earning upwards of 30k a year then through putting more weight on than my body could deal with and a series of mishaps I ended up with chronic back problems with horrendous shooting pains down the back of my legs, this had a huge affect on our life I was no longer able to work and the little savings we had soon dwindled away. All of this time I have been benefit dependant claiming Incapacity Benefit, child tax credit, child benefit, council tax benefit and housing benefit, quite a list I know and something over the years I have not been proud of, but, ultimately I still took the money whenever it was due.
Nothing has changed for me over the last few years apart from my back problem getting worst and of course piling more weight on at the same time, vicious circle and heart breaking at times.
When the new ESA was unveiled and over the proceeding months I saw what people were going through with the medicals and being declined benefit I promised myself that this was the end for me, the end of being state reliant, since then I have been somewhat preparing myself with a carefully prepared plan:
1/ Lose some weight: Still happening have dropped 3 stone so far this is more of an ongoing process but slowly getting there.
2/ Get pain under control: Over the last 12 months I have tried more pain medicine that I don't know what, with help from my pain clinic I have finally got to the stage where I have limited movement as pain free as it is ever going to be, the downside I am taking morphine twice a day with a cocktail of other drugs so lots of side effects but again getting there. I am now also on the waiting list to go and have the injection in my lower back, if this works I will be able to cut down some of my pain medication. Ultimately a good weight loss will see this problem improve 1000%!
3/ What will I do?: Well I decided for my own reasons that I will not bore you all to death with that the only real way forward was for me to be self employed, so then I had to decide what to do, well the one thing 7 nearly 8 years on incapacity has given me is lots and lots of spare time, in this time I have learnt lots and lots of new skills and there are 3 or 4 different things I could well do, so I have decided rather than put all my eggs in 1 basket I am going to work extremely hard and do all of them! I wont go into the details as this post has already got longer than I expected but 2 of them are computer based and 2 are real world based.
The inevitable happened just before Christmas, I got the letter telling me my transfer to ESA was underway, the next day I got the ESA50 from Atos that needs to be back by the end of January, so for me D-Day has arrived, I now have a matter of weeks to get all my ducks in a row and get moving. I will be sending the ESA50 back to them on time but would like to be up and trading before any medical, if I do not get called for a medical then it will be time to still move forward and sign off.
What Do I Need? Well although my new business can and will be set up on a she string I am still going to need a little help financially, what a will be available to me as someone who is coming off long term incapacity?
Will I qualify for any kind of grants or government help I am in Wales?
Also will there be any run on benefit wise? I will need to claim Working Tax Credit if I understand it right our current claim will end and I will have to apply afresh, is this correct? How long will it take?
Obviously I am not going to be making NMW from day 1, I am hopeful within 3-6 months though to be at this level bearing in mind in the very early days I will need to re-invest what I am taking in stock and other business associated costs, will I even qualify for WTC with no actual wage for the first few months?
Anything I have forgot? Any other help available to me??
Also would I be better business wise being in a partnership with my wife or should we look at a limited company?
I am all ears and really appreciate any help you can give me, I have been planning this for the best part of 12 months now but I have been concentrating more on the losing weight, pain under control and training myself to be able to do something rather than the paper work side.
I thank you in advance and sorry for the longest post ever! :)
I have been around these parts for a few years now but wanted to start a brand new MSE ID for my new journey, our journey to a new life.
A bit of background, I am 30 something male with a wife and 3 children all under 12, going back 7 years I had a great job earning upwards of 30k a year then through putting more weight on than my body could deal with and a series of mishaps I ended up with chronic back problems with horrendous shooting pains down the back of my legs, this had a huge affect on our life I was no longer able to work and the little savings we had soon dwindled away. All of this time I have been benefit dependant claiming Incapacity Benefit, child tax credit, child benefit, council tax benefit and housing benefit, quite a list I know and something over the years I have not been proud of, but, ultimately I still took the money whenever it was due.
Nothing has changed for me over the last few years apart from my back problem getting worst and of course piling more weight on at the same time, vicious circle and heart breaking at times.
When the new ESA was unveiled and over the proceeding months I saw what people were going through with the medicals and being declined benefit I promised myself that this was the end for me, the end of being state reliant, since then I have been somewhat preparing myself with a carefully prepared plan:
1/ Lose some weight: Still happening have dropped 3 stone so far this is more of an ongoing process but slowly getting there.
2/ Get pain under control: Over the last 12 months I have tried more pain medicine that I don't know what, with help from my pain clinic I have finally got to the stage where I have limited movement as pain free as it is ever going to be, the downside I am taking morphine twice a day with a cocktail of other drugs so lots of side effects but again getting there. I am now also on the waiting list to go and have the injection in my lower back, if this works I will be able to cut down some of my pain medication. Ultimately a good weight loss will see this problem improve 1000%!
3/ What will I do?: Well I decided for my own reasons that I will not bore you all to death with that the only real way forward was for me to be self employed, so then I had to decide what to do, well the one thing 7 nearly 8 years on incapacity has given me is lots and lots of spare time, in this time I have learnt lots and lots of new skills and there are 3 or 4 different things I could well do, so I have decided rather than put all my eggs in 1 basket I am going to work extremely hard and do all of them! I wont go into the details as this post has already got longer than I expected but 2 of them are computer based and 2 are real world based.
The inevitable happened just before Christmas, I got the letter telling me my transfer to ESA was underway, the next day I got the ESA50 from Atos that needs to be back by the end of January, so for me D-Day has arrived, I now have a matter of weeks to get all my ducks in a row and get moving. I will be sending the ESA50 back to them on time but would like to be up and trading before any medical, if I do not get called for a medical then it will be time to still move forward and sign off.
What Do I Need? Well although my new business can and will be set up on a she string I am still going to need a little help financially, what a will be available to me as someone who is coming off long term incapacity?
Will I qualify for any kind of grants or government help I am in Wales?
Also will there be any run on benefit wise? I will need to claim Working Tax Credit if I understand it right our current claim will end and I will have to apply afresh, is this correct? How long will it take?
Obviously I am not going to be making NMW from day 1, I am hopeful within 3-6 months though to be at this level bearing in mind in the very early days I will need to re-invest what I am taking in stock and other business associated costs, will I even qualify for WTC with no actual wage for the first few months?
Anything I have forgot? Any other help available to me??
Also would I be better business wise being in a partnership with my wife or should we look at a limited company?
I am all ears and really appreciate any help you can give me, I have been planning this for the best part of 12 months now but I have been concentrating more on the losing weight, pain under control and training myself to be able to do something rather than the paper work side.
I thank you in advance and sorry for the longest post ever! :)