Is Auto-entrepreneur right for us?

We are still working on our business plan, but hope to start trading within the next few months. The main enterprise is going to be making and selling concrete garden ornaments, but I am also going to be making household items, such as cushion covers, tablecloths and lavender bags. We are not expecting to make that much money, perhaps doing a market once a fortnight, to start off with.

Our current thinking is to register as auto-entrepreneur, and to each register individually, as I may also combine a bit of piano/English tutoring on my auto-entrepreneur, and my husband wants to concentrate on the ornaments. So, in effect, he’d make and sell the ornaments, and I’d make and sell the other household things. Although we may sometimes share a market stall.

We have Form E106 healthcare until December 2011, but want to make sure we get onto the social security after that (if poss). Is this possible if we’re auto-entrepreneur? If not, our thinking would be that we’ll do auto-entrepreneur for a year to test the water and then maybe, if things go well, change to micro-enterprise. Would that be the right thing?

Could I ask what are the charges if we are both individual auto-entrepreneur’s and make sure we don’t help out with each other’s business?  Is it literally just a tax on the money we make? Also, is it correct that auto-entrepreneur doesn’t entitle you to social security / health cover?  Have I missed anything? Finally, in Limousin we may be entitled to a “settlement grant” for starting a new business, would we be eligible if we were auto-entrepreneur?