Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK
<p><pre><code>    > You should have savings to cover at least 4 months of
    > your usual expenses. You will spend some money
    > establishing a company. It may take several weeks to
    > find your first contract.
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If you wanted to be extra safe, sure. I made the switch when I was heavily in debt, and it helped me get out of debt, so YMMV.<p><pre><code>    > A service like www.formationsfactory.co.uk will make the
    > incorporation process easy.
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Actually it's super easy online using the UK government sites now. I set up a company (again) about ~14 months ago, and it took about an hour of filling in .gov.uk forms online. I would recommend just doing it yourself.<p>Setting up a bank account is pretty easy too, and I'm not sure why you'd use a third party for it. 15 minutes of filling out HSBC forms did it for me.<p><pre><code>    > Finding your first client might be hard.
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Sure. Most permanent jobs have a 4 week notice period, and you can find contractor roles happy for you to start in 4 weeks. Line one up before you quit, and there's no 2-3 week mad rushing around trying to find a contract.<p>If you're just getting in to it, start with a recruiter. They'll eat in to your contract rate, for sure, but they'll also have a far better visibility of the market than you, they'll get better feedback from clients than you, and they'll help chase your invoices and so on. I worked as a contractor for a long time and never had a bad experience with a recruiter, where the OP seems to have had a dreadful time...<p><pre><code>    > rates
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Go look on jobsite. For Central London, a developer should be asking for £300-£600/pd depending on seniority and what they're doing.<p><pre><code>    > IR35
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In addition to IR35, they're about to massively change how dividend tax works. You might be better off looking at an umbrella company like Giant, who'll save you a lot of accounting hassles...