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Beginner’s luck

 Three Fivers is predicated upon being able to start a ‘business’ that makes money from just five pounds of investment. Today I could close it down as successful. In my first ever venture into share dealing, I bought £5 worth of Harland and Wolff shares at 4:05pm. At 4:38pm, I offloaded them for a 13p (2.6%) profit. Not enough to pay the mortgage, nor even to qualify as a side hustle, but profit nonetheless. 13p doesn’t buy much these days - not even a Freddo - but, 2.6% profit compounded does add up; my love of a spreadsheet shows how profit becomes more interesting over five days below. Over 12 months (365 days, although you cannot trade for at least 104 of these days) that would turn my humble £5 into around £5300. Not bad. I’m not especially enamoured of share trading, but it can be quite interesting I think if I add in additional rules; devote a maximum of 5 minutes a day to it and invest the whole of the capital at once - no portfolio. Whether this will survive even the next trad
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Business as usual

  It's one of my great regrets that I have always found it far easier to get a job in a corporation in the top three in its sector, than I have been able to get a job in a charity. All of the odds should be in my favour; market leading companies on my CV, experience worth probably hundreds of thousands of pounds, but no success. The loop I've faced is: see, apply, don't get acknowledged/don't get invited to interview. This is a shame for me because, as must be obvious by now, I'm not greatly motivated by money - I don't want to be a fund manager or a venture capitalist. I'm much more interested in the effects of my work on people. So in the past week I've put £5 into Trading 212, to deal stocks and shares to see if that's viable as a business, although admittedly the idea leaves me quite cold and so I haven't chosen which shares to buy. What I'm particularly interested in is business as a lever to improve things; all around us recently we hav
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Happy New Year

  A quick post - later than I wanted, but close to my promised weekly post. A very quick update - for 2023, I hope I lose all of the princely £5 invested in the share trading app, because I’ve had an alternative idea that I want to include, but rules are rules… On the publishing company, we’re closer to being able to republish stuff that interests me; as I understand it (and there’s always that nagging possibility that I do not understand it at all), copyright law allows for free reproduction after the author’s life + 75 years have elapsed. Therefore, after the 21st January 2025, royalty-free reproduction of George Orwell’s works will be possible. In the meantime, I’m going to try to curate a group of great influential books such as The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists in a sort of socialist imprint. That should cover some considerable time and effort, but is at least something concrete. For now, Happy New Yesr!
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Tree fivers

One of the first, most immediate, effects of starting Three Fivers was the realisation that I don’t have what it takes; I’ve no interest in the acquisition of money. In part this is environmental - I’ve pretty much always had enough, and in part it’s attitude; money is only a utensil. I know people who are very wealthy and the happiest of these are the ones that also treat money as a means, not an end. A secondary realisation is the polarisation of society in recent years is demonstrated perfectly here; my idea of how the three businesses might thrive is polarised, I’ve imagined only having too little or having an absurd amount - the idea of earning ‘a decent living’ has been lost. Like becoming a reality TV star - in lieu of actual talent - people focus on trying to be the next Elon Musk, ignoring that this role is already taken. What these nuggets of self-knowledge do, however, is re-focus the real purpose of this experiment; can a viable business come from a £5 cash injection? The a
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Heads and tales

  So, it turns out that the collectible 50p market isn’t as dynamic as I’d hoped. Who could have predicted that. There may yet be a viable business in it, maybe not, but it will be worth critiquing. Before the next week is out, a full update on the publishing company idea.
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In activity week

I've largely been the only person in my department this week, so the update is brief and hardly illuminating; I've looked, downloaded but committed to nothing. It has also been freezing cold which is irrelevant other than for the fact that I'm extremely grateful that my entrepreneurism isn't how I pay the utility bills. Update: - Downloaded Trading 212 app, largely based on the promise of zero fees, "invest from as little as £1" and buy fractions of shares - Been scouring eBay for 50p pieces for sale to gauge how much mine could go for. With Christmas and postal strikes, this is not a time to be selling collectable but relatively common coins, it seems - Start a publishing company; some actual positivity here - I've researched names, self-publishing routes, markets and copyright law, plus some technology. A full update in next week's post. (I've also thought of a name I like for the publishing company, so I need to find a way to reserve it/protect
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(Another) New start

For reasons that I won't bore you with, this is an attempt to, beginning this week, do 52 blog posts for the Three Fivers project. As ever, I've taken it to the wire and this is the final day of the first week. Failure, as ever, is tantalisingly close. To summarize, I want to see if three viable businesses can be created, capitalised each with a crisp £5 note. Over the many months of inactivity, I've decided upon the three areas that I'll work on. I'm going to tell you exactly what they are, so that you can copy/compete/scoff at my efforts. They are: 1. Start a publishing company 2. Trade shares 3. Trade 50p pieces I have a back up idea which, if I can make £5 of profit from any, or all collectively, of these ventures I'll start. However, here is the rationale behind each of these businesses. A publishing company - I love books and the process of making books, having dabbled a little in that industry. What with the upsurge of self-publishing platforms, the appar
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