I Am Not My Numbers

It's been a stressful day today - the offer I made on a fantastic flat was rejected, but after consultation with my accountant, I've upped it. Now I just have to wait.

I've discovered that buying property is not the easiest thing to do. As I'm self-employed, the bank requires two years of "audited" accounts, and a projection for the next year, too before they will consider me for a mortgage.

Some things that I can expense as a self-employed individual - like a proportion of my rent for my home office, for example - actually now work against me as it depresses my "net income" (after expenses like that). Its great (and perfectly legitimate) where the taxman is conerned but not when I want to show actually how much disposable I have coming in to the bank. After all, my rent would have to be paid whether or not I was self-employed.

It's odd because, if I was a PAYE earner, even though I would still do work at home, the bank would just accept my headline salary as evidenced by three months of payslips.

Being self-employed has benefits that I would never even consider giving up to go back to PAYE, freedom being the main one.

But as time like this, I do wish that banks would view me as more than just my numbers.