Simple Investing For The Self-Employed

Nobody is coming to sort this out for you. But you already knew that.

The moment you went self-employed, an enormous amount of financial infrastructure stopped working on your behalf. The tax, the pension contributions, the sick pay, the safety net. All of it stopped. And nobody handed you a manual.

There are around five million self-employed people in the UK. The vast majority are managing their finances somewhere between mild improvisation and structured chaos. Not because they're bad with money. Because nobody has ever given them a clear, honest account of what working for yourself actually means financially.

This book is that account.

Written by someone who spent twenty-five years inside the industry

Stuart Welch's career took him from Chartered Accountant to Chief Executive of NatWest Stockbrokers, CEO of TD Direct Investing, and Global Head of Personal Investing and Advice at Fidelity International. He knows exactly how the financial system treats the self-employed - and how consistently it fails to explain itself.

What's inside

• Why your financial life is genuinely different - not worse, but different. Understanding the gap is the prerequisite for everything else
• The tax you owe and when you owe it - self-assessment, payment on account, and how to make January boring rather than terrifying
• Sole trader or limited company - what the difference actually means for your money
• Your emergency fund, protection, and financial foundations - the unglamorous work that makes everything else possible
• The pension gap - what you lost the day you stopped being employed, and how far behind you probably are
• The SIPP - your primary pension vehicle, and the one mistake that quietly destroys years of saving
• The limited company pension advantage - the employer contribution mechanism most directors know about vaguely and almost none are using properly. This chapter alone is worth the cover price
• Contributing when your income varies - a practical framework that works with irregular earnings rather than against them
• The ISA and your business surplus - the second most important account, and what to do with the money sitting in the company account doing nothing
• Planning the wind-down - the self-employed retirement is gradual, not a cliff edge. How to plan for the version that actually happens
• Selling the business, avoiding scams, and finding the right professional help

The self-employed financial life has more moving parts than the employed one. But the moving parts are understandable, the decisions are manageable, and the advantages - once you can see them clearly - are real and significant.

Start now. The gap is smaller than you think.