Lisa Works From Home

If you’d told me two years ago that I would be able to quit Walmart and make not only enough to cover my part time job there but actually MORE than I was making as an assistant manager (minus daycare and fuel) well I would have put you in contact with my broker to buy my swampland in Arizona.  If you’re like me, you like real figures and since I’m all about real-ness, here’s mine.

I grossed $40,000 per year at Walmart and I paid for family coverage health insurance ($2,000 deductible and a bunch of other add on charges with a 20% co-pay on Rx — totally NOT great insurance) while claiming zero on income withholding.  Bi-weekly I brought home $1,007.69 so we’ll call that $2,000/month.  I realize there’s two extra checks per year in there but there’s also a proportionate amount of my two largest payments coming out of them, namely daycare and fuel, so they weren’t really extra.  Here’s what it looked like:

• $2,000 each month
• - 440.00 Vincent daycare
• - 250.00 After school program for Darren and Kenny
• - 300.00 My fuel
• $1010.00 Net after just daycare and fuel during school

The after school program for the boys would be significantly higher during holidays and school in-service days when they attended all day so that figure is conservative and more likely to be closer to $300.00 each month.  And that’s just during the school months.  During summer it gets even better:

• $2,000 each month
• - 440.00 Vincent daycare
• - 600.00 Summer program Darren and Kenny
• - 200.00 Activity fees, field trips, swimming lessons, etc
• - 300.00 My fuel
• $460.00 Net PER MONTH after daycare and fuel

Yeah that’s right, I was working 65-80 hours each week and suffering through a two hour commute each day for a whopping hundred something a week.  When I look at the cold hard truth of the matter, now that I’ve had a decent night’s sleep, well to be honest my head hurts.  Granted, there’s some other factors here - Vincent will be in half day kindy next year, Darren will be able to stay home in a few years, and my salary would have gone up each spring.  But bottom line….. aint that sad?  And that’s not even counting all the extra expenses of me working like my lunches out because of no time to make something at home.  Even at $3.00 or less those add up quickly and when I worked 18-20 hr days I’d have two or even three meals at the store.  Ed did all the cooking (if you could call it that) which consisted of primarily processed ready meals, frozen pizza, and chicken nuggets.  You can only imagine the state of our food budget, not to mention our health.  If I really had the time and several bottles of wine along with a good friend to hold the tissue I’ll bet I could go through the previous year’s checks and find that not only did I not make any money, I’m willing to place a $20 bet that in fact it COST me to work.  Hell in the stress level alone I paid dearly.

Now you can imagine why going to part-time evening cashiering wasn’t much of a step down for me.  I basically didn’t lose any money but got to have much less stress.   So I stepped down as a Manager and went to part-time cashiering which meant I was away from home five nights a week from 6:00-11:30pm.  When I heard of at home agents running their own business with a call center in a home office I figured it was a scam.  After researching and hanging out at several sites I learned that it had possibilities.  I signed up with LiveOpsand several weeks later began to take my certification quizzes.  LiveOps routes incoming calls for infommerials so this isn’t telemarketing or cold-calling. 

My first checks were small as I was only spending a few hours on the weekends taking calls - the busiest time for agents, even busier than the prime time of third shift.  After a weekend off from Walmart I wondered just what kind of potential there was for weekend income and bumped up my hours to about six that Saturday and Sunday.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that with bonuses I made $70 Saturday and $97 Sunday.  Not only that, I was sitting in my pj’s having lunch with my family on my breaks and kept up with the laundry those days as well.  I never had to leave the house and I nearly doubled my pay from Walmart.  This was a Good Thing.

After a few months I realized that there’s no limit to the potential of earning money with LiveOps or a number of other WAH companies so I quit Walmart (for a lot of other reasons as well).  Ed obtained insurance from his employer which actually provides a normal policy for less money than Walmart’s (our monthly Rx bill alone went from $360 to $20).  You can see why my goal of $800 each month is set because if I made that I would be averaging my salary from Walmart.  I’m pleased to say that I’ve more than doubled that goal in the past weeks.  I’ve tried several different strategies for my scheduling to maintain a high call volume while meeting the needs of my family, home, and farm.  I cannot believe how amazing this is and I thank my stars I found LiveOps every morning - as I’m making my 20 second commute in my manure covered boots or even pj’s with my cup of coffee preparing to work.

Now there are issues at ANY place you work, and LiveOps is not immune.  First and foremost I’m not an employee, I’m a contractor and will be provided with a 1099 which means I need to file self-employment taxes.  In addition, I had to accept these facts:

• We had to install and maintain a completely separate phone line for LiveOps work
• I am required to have DSL or cable internet, no dial-up or satellite
• I paid $30.00 for my own background check (I believe it’s $50 now)
• There are traditional benefits vacation or insurance
• If I don’t work, I don’t get paid - even if I lose electricity or something out of my control
• There can be absolutely no background noise at all - kids, dogs, doorbells, nothing
• My call volume is determined by my ranking which means attendance, sales, and a host of other factors.  If I don’t perform I won’t get call volume and will have few calls.

On the other hand:

• I am totally 100% in charge of my schedule - third shift this week, a week off, early morning hours next week, 20 this week, 50 next week, all that is up to ME
• No daycare whatsoever, I’m home for my family
• I work one hour before everyone wakes up then get them off to work and school.  Vincent watches a movie or cartoons while I work another two hours and bing, bang I’m done for the day.
• I work 4-5 hours each Saturday and 6-7 each Sunday because of bonuses and call volume.  I’ve doubled my Walmart net as an assistant doing this, even after self-employment taxes. 
• Increasing just a small amount each day and a couple hours on the weekends brought me nearly $900 this pay period.  That’s for TWO WEEKS, not four.  Christmas is paid for, with cash and some to spare.
• During low call volume I surf, play games, or figure bills so I’m not wasting my time
• The lowest I made was $9.00 once.  Once.  I average $13-$18/hr.