New year - new start

So in a year and a half, I've done nothing with this; I've not blogged, not bought, sold, come up with ideas etc etc.

The reasons for this are many, and too boring to go into here (this is supposed to be somewhat entertaining, after all), but can be summarised by one word:

Laziness.

Not just the laziness of I can't be bothered, but the laziness of I haven't needed to.

My job is always quite busy, I've had promotions, pay rises etc. The comfort of a monthly pay check has meant that I've constantly been looking at getting this project up and running tomorrow. Or tomorrow. Or tomorrow.

But a conversation I had this morning with my friend Callan has punctured my complacent balloon, in a wide-ranging chat he said, "my biggest fear - leaving here and not getting another job."

The economic conditions are worsening and, as I told him, I've been here before - back in 1992, having successfully done dozens if not hundreds of mortgage repossession court appearances as a trainee Solicitor, I was made redundant and lost my training contract. Suddenly I found that I couldn't get a job in Iceland, for a manager who when I was being interviewed was writing out signs saying "potatoe".

So, as we are headed seemingly back to these times, I'll restart Three Fivers (with some important tweaks to what I want to achieve) to see if one can start a viable business with just £5, and keep hunger, homelessness and despair at bay if the worst should happen.

I hope you'll join me.

Comments

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 ...

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!

Failure is not the same as a business failing

Already, I have failed. It's not terminal to the project, maybe not even to the strand of the project, but it's failure nonetheless. Despite literally *minutes* of trying, I've been unable to link Google's AdSense to this blog to (hopefully) monetise the blog. (If anyone can explain to me how I get round a circular set of "Press this to verify > You need to do this in blogger.com > Go to Google AdSense > Press this to verify", I'm all ears.) Now, I'm pretty unmoved by this - I've lost nothing and I'd be writing these anyway. Everyday I hear of more and more businesses that are laying people off, closing UK operations or just plain going under. That's heartbreaking, because they're not just venturing a fiver and writing stuff in lunchbreaks. Fortunately, I still have a nominal five quid left - having used no resource other than my time - to invest into another venture. Comments are open and I'm open to ideas, before I start ...

Three Fivers

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