I'm a company!

Thursday arvo I went along to an induction session with a group called 1^st Contact. For a relatively modest fee ($75 in Australia, £35 if you buy in UK) they provide a prepaid mobile phone account, a calling card for home, a card that gets discounts and, most importantly, assistance setting up a bank account and a whole lot of useful advice on getting an NI Number (similar to a Tax File No in Aus), how to register for the NHS and even how to divert some of your National Insurance into an approved pension fund (so you get to keep it!). All really useful stuff – but a word of advice, some of their stuff doesn’t work quite as they promise (they don’t tell you that half your free calling credit doesn’t arrive until your first topup, for example, and the first time I tried to use my discount card, at the Museum of London, the nice man on the desk looked at me blankly… he’d never heard of a 1^st Contact discount card…)

However, I went back again the next morning to sort out “how to set up a limited company” so I can work as a contractor and walked out with a fistful of legal documents, and a couple of agency referrals. Now all I have to do (apparently) is work out whether I want to start work straight away, or have some more holiday first.