Lisa Works From Home

Schedule your own hours, be your own boss, earn great money while still balancing your family…… all this sounds wonderful but is it really a dream come true to work at home?  Well in my case, absolutely!  I love the flexibility of scheduling my own hours each week and my job working around my family and farm schedule.  For my situation, there are really no drawbacks but I can understand where for others, there just might be.  Here are some things to remember about working from home.

• Most of the time, you’re not an employee.  As an Independent Contractor you are responsible for your own income taxes and your contract is not guaranteed, meaning either party can cancel it at any time for any reason.  As you search around the internet you’re going to see others warning new contractors to always have back up eggs in the basket - take that sentiment seriously!  As much as I enjoy working with LiveOps, I have two other projects as well (bound by confidentiality so I can’t share them with you here) so that should something happen with my contractor status at LiveOps, I can continue to earn money while I work it out.

• There’s rarely a “set schedule”.  This can be a huge benefit but it can also be a thorn since it’s entirely up to you to set and WORK your schedule.  If you’re not motivated enough to set and keep that schedule, you will find yourself falling short of income goals - which defeats the purpose of working at home.

• You need to make some investments.  As you’re not an employee, any equipment or software purchases will likely be your responsibility.  There are some companies that provide this for you but not all of them.  You’ll most likely need a high-speed internet connection, great memory space on your hard drive, latest versions of popular software, and a separate land-line business phone.  I also recommend a comfortable headset so you can type while on the phone. 

• You need organizational skills.  You are in charge of your at home business so you need to keep it organized - for yourself and for the tax man.  You’ll be eligible for a home office deduction so you need to keep track of all those business expenses like equipment and mileage.  This deduction can be a great benefit to you, but please take the advice of your tax preparer when you start working at home.

• “It’s not fair!”  Let’s face it, there are times in the workplace when supervisors make exceptions to the rule because of extenuating circumstances.  Well, most likely, you won’t find that in contracting to work at home and you need to know that right up front.  For example, my LiveOps contract states that I cannot have any background noise and that includes barking dogs, arguing children, neighing horses, moo-ing cows, and crowing roosters.  It’s not my fault  that these creatures sometimes get noisy but I have taken every precaution to soundproof my office because if it does happen, I could lose my contract - fair or not.  This is my responsibility  and I would have no recourse should LiveOps end my contract because of background noise.

• Friends and family may not understand.  When you’re a stay at home mom you seem to get called from the school to volunteer a lot, don’t you?  Well, what else do you have to do!  That does seem to be the mentality and you’ll find it when you tell others you work from home.  It’s very easy to volunteer to babysit a friend’s children or run those errands for a family member because you do have that flexibility most of the time.  It takes willpower and strength to know when you should use that flexibility and when to decline because you need to work.  Trust me, it can be a tough balance.

If it sounds like working from home could be an option for you, I encourage you to visit the links for credible companies from this site and apply.  Most of them will be part-time which would allow you to begin working with them while still keeping another job until you find out for sure if this is right for you.