Thinking Realistically About Working From Home

When considering working from home, you have to consider not only what you will be doing but how much you need to make to be profitable.  One of the hardest decisions, you can make is what you want to do at home.  Some jobs that you can do at home are blogging, customer service, data entry, marketing, recruiting, sales, telemarketing, website design, and so many more.

Here are some things that you must consider when making the decision to switch to working from home.

Is it something that you can afford?

When you start working from home unless you have a shoe in with your company or some other alley, you will be losing that stable income that you are used to having.  You will, also, lose that nice insurance plan you are on unless your spouse is carrying it for you. 

Now before you get all down, there are things that you will be gaining when you figure out if you can afford it.

• You will no longer have daycare.  This is a plus and a negative.  For me when my son came into my life through foster care, he was too active.  He talked too much.  I needed daycare.  In this case, you will have to figure out if you can still afford daycare.
• You won’t have to pay gas.
• You lose the tear and wear on your vehicle.
• You can make your lunch at home.  Eating home cost less than eating out.  At least it does for me.
• Your wardrobe will get less expensive.  Now there is an exception here, if you decide to be a door to door salesman, it may go up.

So there are a lot of pluses as well.  You get to raise your own children.

How important is your career path or is being a full time parent more important?

Is raising your children more important than a career path to you?  Once you make this decision, you will no longer be “Ms Ziegler, Administrator” but become “Jason’s mommy”.  Some people struggle with their identity when they come home.  They no longer have that colleague to talk about what is going on in the office.   Instead of a colleague, you will have dirty diapers and cartoons.  But lots and lots of sticky love fingers.

On the other hand, you may have already decided that you want to be home full time with your children.  This decision might be easy for you to make but it still can be a rough haul.  For each of us, that is a very personal decision.

My story

In my case, I had no problem walking away from my career.

Mind you, I worried a lot about money at the time.  Could we afford to live on one income?  Could I put that extra pressure on my spouse?  But I didn’t have a choice.  You see, when my daughter was about 18 months old, she became deathly ill.  I say deathly because the doctors thought she had cystic fibrosis.  They told me the best thing that I could do for her is get her out of the daycare system.  She was sick every week.

It affected both of our jobs as we struggled to take care of her when she was sick.  I would take off one week and he would take off the next.  Promotions were being passed on to another co-worker.

We made the decision for me to come home to take care of her.  For a long time, I struggled to find something to do since she was still ill.  I couldn’t take telemarketing unless I worked third shift.  This meant that I would be exhausted when my husband got home because I had to stay up to take care of my daughter during the day.  I had been an administrator for 20 years.  So this change in my career was really hard for me to take.

I did eventually find a niche where I belong.

I love to recruit.  I love to train.  But it was not easy coming home.  I missed my fellow workers looking up to me with respect.  I missed going to work.  I missed adult voices.  But for me, I’ve been rewarded ten times over.  I get to see my children grow up.  My daughter was found to have a low immune system and is doing wonderfully now.  I don’t regret my decision.

I would love to hear your stories of being a stay at home parent and how you have made it work.

photo credit: kaeru.my