Val

Also don't itemise it down to the minute. 'Additional pages and booking form: £450' lands better than a fourteen line spreadsheet, which invites line-by-line negotiation.

Slight disagreement with the crowd — three clients teaches you to sell, one client teaches you to deliver. If you're early and still bad at finding work, the practice of keeping three plates spinning has value the money doesn't show.

Six month emergency fund plus regular investing plus £300 spare means you're doing fine either way. This is a good problem and the difference between the two paths over four years is small enough that peace of mind should win.

Three years of consistent buying into broad funds is the hard part and you've already done it. The optimisation you're asking about is worth a rounding error next to that.

This didn't occur to me at all — I'd been thinking of accountants as competitors.

Worth noting the platform may already be reporting your sales to the tax authority — many do above certain thresholds. That's a reason to file rather than a reason to panic, but it does mean quietly ignoring it isn't a real option.