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.

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"!

It's YOUR Choice - Wage Slave or Entrepreneur?

Is it better to keep on working for someone else for a regular paycheck or start your own business and earn your own paycheck?

It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time most of us were slaves to persons of privilege called masters, who in turn were owned by a ruling class of people. Slaves did the master’s bidding under threat of bodily harm or banishment, both of which often resulted in death. Some masters took minimal care of their slaves by feeding, clothing, and housing them, but for the most part slaves were worked until they ceased to be of value to their masters and were then disposed of.

It wasn’t long, however, before the slave-master realized that rewards for good work caused the slaves to do better work. Rewards included better food, cover from the weather and trinkets. Slaves were quick to discover that other slaves would trade amongst themselves for these rewards.

Giving slaves too much in the way of payment meant it was conceivable they could accumulate enough to break out of the system. To guard against this, the concept of requiring slaves to pay a tribute to the owner arose. For this tribute the owner would offer lifetime protection to the slave.

Slaves were still able to break away and set up shops and establishments of their own, and although these renegades competed with the slave masters, they provided so many of the goods and services slave masters valued, and provided them at such a low cost, the renegades were not only allowed to remain in business, they were encouraged.

Today we call these people small business persons or entrepreneurs.

And today a two-part system of exacting tributes continues to exist, one of which favors and encourages entrepreneurs. These are the W-2 and the "1099" (sometimes called "Schedule C") systems.

If you are a wage earner under W-2 you receive a paycheck with many of the "tributes" already deducted, and you can spend the remainder on food, shelter, clothing, transportation, education and other desirable things. No, you don’t earn $60,000 a year as you thought; you earn $30,000. Half your earnings are taken by various levels of government: federal, state, county, city and others.

If you operate under 1099, however, you receive the $60,000 up front, and you get to deduct the cost of sheltering your business, the cost of employees and other expenses before you pay taxes on the remainder. It is possible to arrange your business affairs so that you live well and only have to pay taxes on what is left after expenses. Sometimes this can result in $0 taxes!

Of course, you will have to hire accountants to get to that point, but even this cost can be subtracted in advance, further reducing your tax bite.

Now, which is better? Pay taxes of $30,000 on the front end of $60,000 in earnings, or paying little or no tax on the same earnings and still have all the perks of ownership?

This, of course, is a highly abbreviated view of why going into business for yourself can be one of the most rewarding things you can do with your life. But it gives you a starting point for thinking about the subject.

Paul Tulenko writes a newspaper column called "Small Business" for the Scripps Howard News Service. This article appeared in The Trentonian on September 21, 2002.

What exactly is home schooling?

Home schooling is one of the fastest growing alternatives to public education today. Simply put, it is teaching your own children at home. When we first started home schooling in 1989, there were still states where it was not legal, and most people had not heard of it. We were likely to hear – “Is it legal” “But what about socialization?” or “Why would anyone want to teach their children at home?” Even our families were opposed to the idea. Hadn’t we attended public school and turned out fine?

Nineteen years later, people still ask those questions, but there is less resistance since home schooling is now legal in all fifty states. Nearly everyone knows someone who home schools, or at least can name their sister’s boyfriend’s uncle’s ex-wife’s hairdresser who home schools. And even if they cannot, there is a growing body of adults who are former homeschoolers distinguishing themselves in every field of endeavor, from medicine to the military.

The laws governing home schooling programs differ from state to state. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here - there are already many good websites where you can learn about the specific requirements in your state. The bottom line is the same, however, no matter where you live: you have decided that you are going to take full responsibility for your child’s education. So the first thing you have to decide is whether you are willing for the buck to stop with you.

It isn’t necessary for you to do all the teaching. There are often local networking groups who have email lists where you can keep track of events and classes offered. Parents from several families may band together and offer a coop, where each one will teach a subject on a rotating basis for a small group of students. There may even be classes offered at your community college, or a special enrichment program for homeschoolers in an institutional setting like a church or a community center.

But it is necessary for you to take all the responsibility. When you have completed whatever grade level you have decided you are comfortable with – whether you just take them through elementary school or all the way through high school - what your child knows, or doesn’t know, will be largely a function of what you exposed him to. You will not be able to blame the schools, or the teachers, or “the kids at school” for any shortfall in your program or in your child’s education.

Don’t let that frighten you away from home schooling. If you can teach your children good study skills, how to read, write and communicate well, how math is used in the real world, and how to find out what they need to know when they need to know it, you are a wonderful candidate for a homeschooling parent! From that basic starting point, it will be entirely up to you and your child to decide what subjects you cover, and in what depth. You can choose a broad based “liberal arts” education, or you can custom tailor your child’s curriculum to a particular interest or ability.

If you are a home based entrepreneur, working with you in your business can give your child interpersonal and professional skills, and an opportunity to apply his academic knowledge in a real world setting. It can also give you a nice tax deduction if you hire your child and pay him a salary. And it will give your child an opportunity to have his own money and learn how to handle it in a controlled setting.