The Downside to Working from Home

More and more people are working from home whether they work for themselves or a company. However, many people jump on the work-at-home bandwagon without considering all of the drawbacks to working at home. While some people are naturally inclined to work at home, others find the transition more difficult to make. There are many benefits to working at home, but the drawbacks need to be considered before you make the choice.

The first drawback to looking for a work at home career is that your current career may not easily transfer to a work at home situation. If you work in the medical field or are a police officer, being a work-at-home mom or dad  might not be an easy transition unless you are willing to change careers entirely. Sales and administrative positions transfer well, as do creative jobs like design and writing. For those in jobs that can’t make the work at home switch, you’ll have to think carefully about what you want to do when start working at home and start investigating that field.

Cost is another important factor in deciding if working at home is right for you. Although many mothers start working at home to save on childcare, there are added costs to being a work-at-home mom. If you need health insurance, it will have to come out of your pocket instead of being paid by your employers. There are also many taxes that you will have to pay. Your record keeping must be excellent in order to keep track of your income and expenses, and to fill out your income tax return at the end of the year.

Working at home with children is not always as easy as it seems. If you have young children that aren’t in school yet, it may be difficult to work when they are awake. This can mean lots of busy naptimes and late nights to get your projects done when they are sleeping. Family members can help take care of your children from time to time, but the responsibility of both your children and your job will be firmly in your hands. With older children, it is sometimes easier to work from home. But you will still have to start and maintain a fairly balanced schedule in order to get everything done. If you are homeschooling, you have to carefully schedule time for school and time for work, and be sure to keep to those parameters.

Individuals who work at home have to be very self-motivated and disciplined in order to get their work done on time and correctly. If you are the type of person that is motivated by outside factors (such as a supervisor), then working at home may not be your cup of tea. When you work at home, there is no one there to look over your shoulder and make sure that you are still working. Be realistic and  you have to be even more disciplined if you work from home and not let what is going on around you be a distraction. Distractions like the television, Internet and housework can be hindrances to your work at home success. Conversely, working can prevent you from tending to the responsibilities of the home.  Working is infinitely more stimulating  to me than housework, and I find it difficult to carve out time to do the laundry or mop the kitchen floor.

Isolation is another problem for work-at-home moms, in particular. Working at home alone can get frustrating and lonely. Make sure you are comfortable with spending time alone, and that you take steps to combat isolation. If you are especially prone to being depressed, then the isolation that comes with working at home may make you feel withdrawn and sad. Taking steps to combat loneliness is an important part of your work-at-home success. You may not be technically alone if you have children at home, but if your children are not old enough to have meaningful conversations with you, it may help to consider your work an opportunity to have that coveted "adult conversation" that you crave.

After considering these factors, you may decide that working at home is not right for you. However, thousands of people deal with these drawbacks and still have successful work at home careers. These reasons should not stop you from working at home if that is really what you want to do.

A new way to look at your Potential!

Thanks for your patience with my writer's block for the past month. It has been a long time since I neglected this blog for such a long time.  I know I am not homeschooling any more, but I had decided to write about other things.  I guess I still don't know what to write about.

What would you like to read about? Seriously, this is not a rhetorical question. I would like some ideas. Since the other part of this blog was supposed to be "home business" - would you want to hear about home business ideas, or are there already too many of those out there?

Meanwhile, here is another interesting read from my old email files. I was actually archiving and deleting things, and I came upon this in the "Deleted Items" archive folder.  My sister-in-law sent it to me in 2005. It was by no means the oldest item in the folder. There were actually things in there from 2003.

Pause for a moment and contemplate someone who has saved deleted emails since 2003.  I bet you didn't know there was such a person. That will make the story that follows even more amusing.  It is entitled

No Email

An unemployed man is desperate to support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor's job at a large firm and easily passes an aptitude test.

The human resources manager tells him, "You will be hired at minimum wage of $5.35 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address so that we can get you in the loop. Our system will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day."

Taken back, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a computer nor an e-mail address. To this the manager replies, "You must understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day."

Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having $10 in his wallet, he walks past a farmers' market and sees a stand selling 25 lb. crates of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate, carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 and arrives home that night with several bags of groceries for his family.

During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day. By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night. He multiplies his profits quickly. Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him.

By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.

Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse that his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage. The tomato company's payroll has put hundreds of homeless and joblesspeople to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed a million dollars. Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance.

Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances.

Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he doesn't have time to mess with a computer and has no e-mail address, the insurance man is stunned, "What, you don't have e-mail? No computer? No Internet? Just think where you would be today if you'd had all of that five years ago!"

"Ha!" snorts the man. "If I'd had e-mail five years ago I would be sweeping floors at Microsoft and making $5.35 an hour."

Which brings us to the moral of the story: Since you got this story by e-mail, you're probably closer to being a janitor than a millionaire.

Saying Goodbye After 4 Years of Homeschool Blogging?

Well, not exactly...

My homeschool adventure is drawing to a close after 20 years. Not sure how I feel about that.

My online persona for a number of years has been "Work-at-homeschool-mom". To a great extent I have defined myself by homeschooling.

But, let's face it. I'm so done with this. My son is 18 and about to graduate. More or less. This could be our last year at the Sandy Cove conference since we will technically no longer be homeschooling. If there are more homeschool families than there are rooms, we will bow out next year.

In the last year or so, this has morphed into a blog about homeschool freedoms and other parental rights issues more than a blog about either homeschooling or home business.

And I have been so busy with my business that I haven't even had time to post here in six months. Of course, that is probably because one of the things I was doing in my business was extensive blogging for clients. I could hardly stand the thought of one more blog post at the end of the day.

I am so grateful for my subscribers and readers, and thank you for the privilege of sharing my homeschool adventure with you!

So, while I am not exactly saying goodbye, I am going to be putting more of an emphasis on the home business side of things. Both my children have joined me in my business, and are finding that they are both cut out for working from home.

Not everyone is, of course. Are you?

I invite you to take a quiz on the subject if you have ever considered working from home.  While it is true that you need self-discipline, there are many ways to have a home based business - and most of them do not involve working your fingers to the bone 80 hours a week. The results of this quiz will help me figure out what kinds of things are your best option. You may not have time to have a "job" at home, but you may have time to get set up to sell affiliate products that will give you a passive income. 

You will receive your results instantly, and I will receive an email with the results. Then over the next few days you will receive emails from me with more information about your quiz.  And after about a week, I will reply with some questions for you so I can make a detailed recommendation about the best kind of business for you.  It may or may not even be something I am currently involved in.

I hope you will take advantage of my offer, whether you are a homeschool mom/dad or not.  With economic uncertainty affecting everyone around the world, now is a good time to implement a "Plan B" for yourself.

Who knows? It could work so well for you that it will eventually replace your "Plan A"!