Hinterholz 8 or The Money Pit?

For non-Austrians, Hinterholz 8 is the Austrian version of The Money Pit.

I've begun renovating the room where my inventory will be stored and I'm starting to feel like an extra in either one of these movies.

To be fair, the house is 78 years old, started in 1938. The original owner was a stonemason, so the foundations of the house are excellent. Over the years, additions were made, renovations became necessary and as always, budget is tight.

As a complete newbie when it comes to home renovations, let me share these fine tips for home renovation with you, as learned by my current house:

• Wasps have eaten huge holes through your 1/4" particle board wall? Just tape a single piece of paper over the hole and cover with wallpaper. No problemo!
  
  Don't worry that you can see sky behind the hole, Austrian winters are short, and in the summer it lets the hot air out again... right?
  
• Are fees for the dump skyrocketing? Adding a new layer to the existing stained carpet has the added benefit of doubling as your carpet padding.
  
  Besides, thick oak plank wooden floors are so passe. And who wants to sand and stain? Just screw particle board directly into the wood floor and glue a layer of industrial blue laminate over it and you'll never worry about finding those pesky screws again. In a few years, you can just add a new layer of sticky felt tiles. And again a few years later so that the door no longer opens without help from your shoulder.
• Newspaper is your best friend. It makes an excellent layer under wall plaster, evens out warped floor boards and educates future generations on the news of the day.
  
  In my case it's Aug 1971 - Oct 1972. Say 'Yes to the People's Party'. My 10 second research on this shows that they sadly lost by a few points to the SPÖ (socialists).
  
  If your budget can afford it - combine with tin foil for even more coverage.
  
  
  
  
• Both newspaper and tin foil make an excellent foundation layer for the next 5 layers of wallpaper over the years. When you're sick of the top layer of wallpaper, be sure to paint it white so that people think they are looking at a smooth finished wall, instead of one that looks like this. 
• When you add wood paneling to the slanted walls and ceiling, make sure you cover up all those layers of wallpaper to make a smooth finish. That will ensure no one will be able to remove the wallpaper without removing the paneling first. But no one will want to do that anyways, since you have excellent taste in gold and brown wallpaper!

But at least I'm down to the antique wood floor and I'll be putting filler in those screw holes (which had to be ripped out), sanding and refinishing. It took a whole week to get to the bottom layers though and I'm still washing wallpaper gunk off the walls.

As for the wood paneling, I ended up having to razor along the edge to get rid of the wallpaper. I'm not up to the task of removing the paneling. Hopefully in two more weeks my warehouse will be ready to move in my new racks!

I'm in! Well almost

Good news, I'm in! I will officially be entering the business start-up program on June 2nd. I wasn't actually worried about it though to be honest. Since the partner group gets paid for assisting in start-ups, they aren't the ones wanting to discourage people by not letting them into the program. :)

I took in my new and improved business concept along with the five year financial plan. My Betreuer (agent) said that I was WAY more prepared than most people, who just waltz in the door with an idea in their head.

I got a bunch of useful hand-outs that show me that I need to generate 80K in revenues in order to earn 1k less a month than I used to.

At that income level, a cool 1000 euros a month goes to pension fund, accidental insurance coverage, medical insurance coverage (don't ask me why those are two separate things) and self-employment insurance (basically your new unemployment fund). What's left over gets taxed, according to that handy tax table I posted.

It's a socialized country, so you gotta fill up the coffers in order to make it work.

However, it was other people filling up the coffers that enabled me to enter the start-up business program and get money each month without dipping into my unemployment fund. If all goes really badly with my start-up, I will still have my full unemployment assistance available to me if necessary.

So nothing's free of course, but I feel you do get good value for your money in the end with the services that are provided in this country.

But that's what starting a business is all about, right? Working twice as hard to earn half as much! Or maybe I should start scrum in my business, lol ->
(just kidding - in my experience with scrum, Jupiter must be in exact alignment with an ascending Saturn on the last full moon in order to create the right work environment for this statement to come even close to being correct)

Business plan - the first 5 years

I'm refining my business plan in preparation for my next meeting. It's already up to 11 pages! However, since I am having it reviewed by German speaking people who might award me with start-up money, I decided to write in their native language instead of mine.

Unfortunately, this means that it takes me about 3x as long to write it, and therefore contains a suspiciously high number of bullet lists instead of full sentences. :-D

Part of your business plan is to draw up a 5 year plan for finances. I put this off for quite some time since my least favorite part of this idea is working with the numbers. However, since I used to be a programmer (albeit not a very good one), I was able to transform this clear and concise tax table:

into this unreadable Excel formula:

=IF(SUM($G24:$R24)>90000,(((SUM($G24:$R24)-90000)*455000/910000)+32880)/4,IF(SUM($G24:$R24)>60000,(((SUM($G24:$R24)-60000)*14400)/30000+18480)/4,IF(SUM($G24:$R24)>31000,(((SUM($G24:$R24)-31000)*12180)/29000+6300)/4,IF(SUM($G24:$R24)>18000,(((SUM($G24:$R24)-18000)*4550)/13000+1750)/4,IF(SUM($G24:$R24)>11000,(((SUM($G24:$R24)-11000)*1750)/7000)/4,0)))))

where cell G24 is Jan theoretical taxable income and cell R24 is Dec theoretical taxable income.

For the eagle-eyed out there, you'll notice I left off the tax for taxable income over 1 million dollars. I'm only describing the first 5 years after all. :-D

Visiting the unemployment agency AMS

AMS is one of the many Amts (state agencies). A wise Austrian once explained to me that "on the happy fun scale of 1 - 10, where 10 is being a space tourist and 1 is visiting marine boot camp, visiting any Amt (state agency) rates about a -5."  It is in fact a way of saving the state money by hoping people will just stay away instead ;)

Here's how not to visit your local AMS office:

1. Visit the wrong Amt.
   
   I admit I should have looked it up first. I went to the same office I went to last time when I was unemployed for a month 6 years ago. So I get there and there are approximately eleventy billion people waiting in front of me. The lines are so long, you have to take a ticket. (you'll understand the emphasis here later)
   
   Remove sunglasses, insert fork. One hilarious woman came in after me and asked if I thought she'd need to buy a parking ticket, or if the 10 minutes grace period would be enough. :-D
   
   After the length of a bible, my turn is up! Woo! First things first - name and address.   Wait - you live in Andritz? Sorry, you're at the wrong Amt! Argh. OK, thank you.
   
2. Visit the right Amt, but do it wrong...
   
   By taking a ticket like at the other Amt. Awesome, there's almost nobody in line! I get right in. I sit down and the agent asks for my form. Slightly confused, I explain I just arrived. Agent informs me that you're not allowed to just take a ticket, you have to get a form from the information desk!  OOOOOOhhhkay.
   
   Goto front desk, there was only about 6 people waiting - great! Clerk 1 hands me a form to fill out. I realize the form makes no sense (it asked me to describe job offerings that I'd want to apply for). I fill out about half and go back to desk and get the other clerk. Clerk 2 looks at it and asks me in an annoyed tone why on earth would I fill out that form. I point accusingly at Clerk 1, who hurriedly leans over and says she just gave me any old form to fill out to keep me busy because it was soooo stressful having 6 people waiting in line! >:-x (that's me swearing on the inside) I was proud of the fact that I managed to stay polite since I actually need something from these people.
   
   Let's skip to the part where I fill out the correct form and get an appointment to see my assigned Betreuer (agent assigned to my case).
3. Talk to your assigned Betreuer, who is not actually the correct Betreuer.
   
   Betreuer asks standard personal information questions. Wait - you have university degrees? You're at the wrong Betreuer! .... loooossssing willlll to liiiivvvveeee.....
   
   But I'll consider naming my first-born after this guy because he was at least able to set me up a meeting with the partner group who reviews business plans and decides if you are allowed to enter the Gründerprogramm "business start-up program". He even wished me lots of luck to boot.
   
   Yeeeesss! Q'apla!

So here's hoping things go better for you on your next visit. Or maybe you just decided never to quit your job, lol.

But things are now officially rolling! Wednesday is the big day where I get to hand in my business plan for review. Woo! Wish me luck!

Step 1: I am an Arbeitslose (person without a job)

So this is Day 2. I'm officially "arbeitslos" (unemployed). Actually even less than arbeitslos because I'm not eligible for unemployment until June because I quit my job instead of being fired or ending it by mutual agreement. This state between your last day at your job until you're covered by unemployment means no medical coverage, so I can forget about getting sick this month ;)

So how does one become an Arbeitslose? It's not so straightforward as it is in the US:

1. Check your contract for how much notice you have to give. In my case it's 3 months since I was a department manager. As a normal employee it's generally around 1-2 months, depending on how long you've been with a company.
2. Check which days you are allowed to quit on. Most often, this is the 15th of the last day of the month. Meaning if you quit on the Jan. 16th, your notification does not go into effect until Jan 31.
3. Notify your supervisor and CC your letter of resignation to Human Resources.
4. Request a "Dienstzeugnis" (basically a certificate of work) from your supervisor. This is an odd invention where by law, the employer isn't allowed to write anything negative, which would make the employee's search for the next job hard. So even if the employee was really bad, you have to choose intentionally neutral phrases such as: This employee performed his assigned tasks. BUT - you're not allowed to use descriptions where it's easy to read between the lines, such as saying the employee tried their best to fulfill their tasks. (unbelievable huh! check this page out: https://www.arbeiterkammer.at/beratung/arbeitundrecht/beendigung/dienstzeugnis.html)
5. Continue working for threeee loooooooooong months. Seriously, I was ready to stick a fork in my eye by the end.

After this preparation, you are now ready to tackle your first trip to AMS Arbeitsmarktservice (for simplicity's sake, let's call this the Unemployment Office). More on that in a later post...

I am going to be selbstständig!

So what does selbstständig mean exactly? Leo says:

1. Self-employed
2. Dependent upon one's self.

It's actually a very apt word in German because as of now, I'm responsible for paying all my bills out of my own resourcefulness instead of just waiting for that paycheck to roll in at the end of the month :-O

So after I told my boss, I posted on Facebook to let everyone know I decided to pursue my long-standing ambition to run my own party shop!

Woo Hoo! No more 8-6 office hours for me!