It's a good question.
It's common for home business owners to take a while to build a customer base. Business (and consequently income) can be slow when you first start out. If you have come from a work environment where you are accustomed to receiving a set amount of money periodically, the change can be unsettling. For a few, the change might even be financially disastrous.
Work From Home Momma feed readers will probably remember that we've already identified some situations in which you should NOT start a home business on this blog.
Today, I want to take a slightly different approach. I want to look at a few areas where you may be able to cut back on your expenses while you wait for your home business to grow.- Commuter costs. Unless your home business requires you to travel to your client's locations you will almost certainly save the cost of commuting. This cost can include things like: gasoline, parking fees, and car maintenance. Some work at home families even find that they can make do with one car. In my own experience, my pre-work from home commute caused me to fill up the tank twice a week. At today's gas prices two tanks of gas a week can be a lot of money! (Even for my little Toyota, that's about $75 a week.)
- Working lunches. Unless your work-from-home business requires you to entertain clients, you will probably not need to eat away from home during the workday. (Although you may want to do so from time to time in order to get out of the house.) Before I became self-employed, I would get sick of eating sandwiches from home and have lunch in the company cafeteria, which cost me approximately $7 a day.
- Daycare costs. There is a lot of discussion about whether a work-at-home mom should use daycare. We've even discussed it on Work From Home Momma in this post, which talks about a mother's helper. The truth is that you do need to set aside a chunk of time each day to really focus and get your work done. Sometimes that does mean hiring full or part-time childcare. Every work-at-home mom's situation is different. My children were already in school when I became a work-at-home mom. In my situation, I am able to work on projects while the kids are at school. I eliminated the cost of after school care and saved approximately $300 a month.
- Other savings. When I began working from home we really analyzed our expenses using a needs versus wants criterion. Ask yourself whether the bills that you pay each month are for things that you really need, or for things that you just want. The answer may surprise you. In my case, I was able to save a significant amount of money by changing my grocery shopping habits and relying much less on convenience foods.
What about you? Do you have some money-saving tips you'd like to share? If so, we'd like to hear them.
Leave a comment and let us know.
I was shocked when I first started working from home to discover how much money it could actually save me. When I did the math, I realized that I could literally make a few hundred dollars less a month and still come out ahead due to gas, lunches, etc!
Simply being home means I spend less. I'm at home working, which means I'm not driving past the mall or being tempted by fast food restaurants. It's a win-win!
Posted by: lornadoone | September 20, 2007 12:05 PM | Permalink to Comment