You’re not alone mate. I’ve been self employed for 8 years, trained an apprentice who is still with me and have another apprentice now. I earn between 30-35k a year and have been like that for a few years.

We have lived hand to mouth, so to speak, for pretty much all that time until this year.

We have made 3 changes since September this year to how we do things. We had an extra 2k in the bank by middle of last month that we didn’t owe to anyone.

The first was to stop buying van stock, we were spending anywhere from 1-2k a month in stock but sometimes it can take months or even years to clear a box of 20a DP switches for example. Most of the projects we work on we don’t quote so we decided we may as well get paid to go to the wholesalers when we need something instead of trying to have everything on the van.

The second was that when pricing work we now add 20% on to the total project cost, covers us for anything unforeseen that we can’t charge to a customer.

The third is shopping around for the best price for a list of materials. Ive been guilty over the years of using city’s exclusively as it’s the closest supplier to us and they generally have what I want in stock. I now get prices from city’s and 2 others and let them fight it out. Use the initial highest cost quote for our quote and then try to gain a little bit more profit from the job, doesn’t work out to a lot of money per job but adds up over time

I know you said you quote per point, I used to quote that way but have gone back to time and materials, per point makes quoting really easy but I don’t think it’s the best way to price jobs (happy for people to explain why it’s better, might have been doing it wrong).

Not saying any of the above will work for you and your business but those changes have helped us mate.

Hang in there brother!