Raw Journalism

I know that for many of you who are working the norm of 9am - 5pm in a day or evening job; probably day dream about working from home, I know I did! I remember commuting to work for about 45 minutes using public transport in the freezing cold, rain washing the mascara from my eyes and down my face therefore having the resemblance of a live horror show, just thinking and wishing that I could work from home. I would continuously brainstorm some crazy ideas of how I could turn this all around!

In all reality I have managed to achieve this goal, but it has come at huge cost. Some, well probably a lot has been financial because of the stress of coping with a lessor income, but today at this very moment I think it was worth it and I also know I could have done this a lot quicker and easier if I had of planned it from the start. The other problems I had were also in relation to, the business models I followed, membership services, lack of support or motivation, and simply confusion in what I was trying to achieve.

While I’m typing this very piece of writing I am looking out the window at the rain falling softly to the ground, it’s Autumn at the moment so the leaves are just stunning in the way that they fall with the rain, the fire is roaring away, and I have a chocolate cake baking in the oven, financially things are picking up again, and life feels just great. I mean I’m not a millionaire YET, but I’m comfortable. To answer the question: Is it great working from home? Well absolutely, but you have to work at it, plan it, and maybe work on a budget prior to the event.

Look at the type of business you want to do from home, you may want to author your own website, you may decide to do garden maintenance or you may want to try childcare. Obviously there are going to be costs involved not only for the maintenance and daily or weekly costs of your new business but also for your current living expenses. I think initially I may have been a few sandwiches short of a picnic on this one; causing myself unneeded financial mishaps.

Out of the three businesses I mentioned above becoming the author of your own website would have to be the most cost effective, you really only need to purchase a domain name and hosting to get started. In terms of the design for your website, you have the option to use pre-designed websites at no extra charge and without the need to learn HTML knowledge, which will save you a huge amount of money and time in terms of start up costs. You’ll be looking at approx $10.00 per year for your domain name and approx $7.00 - $10.00 per month for your hosting; depending on the custom requirements you have. And you may also consider having a automatic email service like Aweber, this will cost you approx $17.00 per month. So all up I would say approx $30.00 per month. This isn’t too bad now is it?

I would recommend putting aside at least 6-9months or even 1 years worth of payments to cover all of your costs, this way you won’t be worried about trying to quickly make a few bucks here and there, especially if your budget is tight. Make sure you can at least cover 6-9months of your current living expenses, again giving you the time to get your business off the ground. It might take you a year to save the money for your business, but it will be worth the wait and you may end up appreciating your business venture even more.

There is of course no reason why you can’t start planning your business whilst working at your day or evening job, there are many tasks and learning curves you’ll have to undergo before you actually start opertating. Getting visitors or traffic to your website can take a bit of time as well, these are things you can be doing while you are saving your money. Who knows by the time you actually leave work you may very well be making some income from your business.

The other important thing I wanted to mention, is TAX. Goodness don’t be afraid of it, talk to your local Tax Office which is generally free and set up your business properly from the start. You will have expenses that you can claim against your business income that you may not have thought of and all of these expenses will add up at the end of the tax year. Generally speaking and please clarify this with the country that you live in but you can claim a percentage for expenses such as:

• Phone
• Broadband
• Power
• Rates
• Rent or Mortgage
• Insurances
• Office Space
• Travel
• Legal and Accounting services
• Stationery
• Entertainment

Basically anything that is related to your business and it’s life, is what you can claim for. Look at it this way, if your rent or mortgage is $400.00 per week and you have your office in one room of the house (depending on the floor space) you could be claiming around 10% (more or less) per week for your office rental space. It may seem small but when you add that up over the year, it equates to $2080.00 this coupled with all of your other expenses can equate to a even larger amount against the income you make. If at the end of the year I only make say $15,000.00 from my website but I have expenses of $9,000.00 I will only pay tax on $6,000.00 instead of the $15,000.00 (Gross Income - Expenses = Net Income) I would be paying my rent, power and phone etc anyway regardless of whether I had a business at home or not, accounting for all of these expenses no matter how small can certainly save you an incredible amount of money each year. You can also start doing this before you actually leave your current job.

I’ll be touching on this subject quite often so do come back when you can, in the mean time here is a check list that you can use to get started.

• Decide on the type of business you want to do from home, in my case it is to become the author of my own website. Think carefully, as you will be doing this around 3-5 days per week, make sure it is something you are going to enjoy doing! You have to be your own motivator to carry out daily tasks, so make sure this is something you are going to be able to get yourself out of bed for!
• Calculate 6-9 months worth of costs to run your business. (Do not include your utilities as you will have to pay these anyway)In this example it would be web hosting, domain name and mail service
• Calculate 6-9 months of your living expenses that you have now, include everything you can think of such as, clothing, outings, utilities, credit cards, etc.
• Calculate how much you are going to need to save each week, fortnight or month etc.
• Enter all of your calculations into a budget so that you can save the money you need. Here is a free excel spreadsheet that you can use, it will update all of your calculations as you go along. If you don’t have excel you might have to use a good old fashion pen and paper!
• Open a savings account and arrange an automatic payment, try and get one of those high interest earning accounts where they charge you a few dollars if you try to withdrawal the money, hopefully this will deter you from spending any of it. (You can also use this account for your business or you may need to use another one depending on your bank fees.)
• Visit your local Tax office and ask to speak to someone about setting up your business finances. The kind of expenses you can claim for, personally I called my office and asked them to visit my home so they could determine the space I could claim for with my office and utilities etc. The service was free.
• Pin your goal to the Fridge, that way each day you’ll see it and it will help keep you motivated.

If you have any questions, or ideas that you can share with others please leave them in the comment section below.

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