The Pitfalls To Home Based Self Employment

The Basic Home Self Employment Hazards

Most people love the idea of working at home for themselves. Being your own boss has its advantages as well as its shortcomings. Scheduling your own time can be very rewarding or financially disastrous depending on your personality. Working at home can create a freedom like no other and again, your personality will determine whether or not you can handle such liberation. Not everyone can.

When I first started my own business working from home our space was limited and I needed a quiet place to get things done. This meant that my home office was literally right next to the bed. I could sit up in bed and take one step into my office chair and I was at work. This had advantages, but I was working ridiculously long hours to get my business off the ground.

The bed had a habit of calling to me about three weeks into my program. Despite my determination it called to me as soon as my energy started to dwindle and the yawning began. Some mornings I was up at two o'clock to get a jump on the day. By ten o'clock in the morning the bed began demanding I come back to it.

I was at the very least able to restrict myself to one half an hour power nap per day. I was not interested in sleeping away my home based business, but my fatigue combined with my proximity to the bed took a significant amount of discipline to keep myself on my own predetermined schedule.

Aside from my overwhelming desire to crawl back into bed, especially on rainy, cold mornings, tax time was a chronic headache. I struggled to determine the laws and the benefits and finding the right accountant to help me figure out how to maximize my taxes and save me the bulk of my income. I fell farther behind in my projects at tax time than I did even over Christmas vacation.

Tax time can be very stressful for work at home people. Tax time comes with changes in laws, discrepancies, and headaches. Tax time requires the help of a professional, even if you have been your own tax guru in the past. For the work at home individual, tax time has now taken on whole new dimension.

Locating a Tax Professional at Tax Time

Not all tax professionals are capable of assisting with work at home tax issues as effectively as others. Don't assume just because someone completed and H&R Block tax session doesn't mean they can make sense of the plethora of tax complications for home office workers and those who are self employed. Not everyone who works at home is self employed. Not everyone who is self employed works at home. These are two separate tax issues and they need to be clearly understood when maximizing your end of year reporting.

Ask a lot of questions when determining if your tax professional is capable of handling your work at home taxes. Work at home tax information can be looked up on the internet so you can at least have a basic guideline if he seems knowledgeable enough to handle your taxes. If you are receiving conflicting work at home tax advice, research a little more. Remember just because you read it on the internet doesn't make it true. And just because your tax advisor tells you something you want to hear doesn't make it true. It is your job to do enough research to be able to know if your tax advisor is capable of handling your work at home tax issues.

Work at Home Overload

Starting a work at home career can be ultimately taxing and a person can quickly find themselves on work at home overload within a fairly short period of time. It's not uncommon for an individual to feel so afraid of failing that they take on more than they can reasonably handle. I fell victim to this work at home syndrome and I accepted every project that crossed my desk. Within a very short time I had so much work to do that there was no sign of ever catching up and I knew early on that I was experiencing work at home overload.

I knew that regardless of my own error I had to complete the projects I had accepted, but I was naturally concerned about early burnout. Nobody wants to experience burn out, and being on work at home overload is one of the fastest ways to get there. I had created the situation myself and I knew that I had no choice but to complete every project I had accepted. But I was unwilling to sacrifice my family in order to do so. The whole point of working at home was to be able to spend more quality time with them.

I set limitations for myself and a few rules that were in fact unbreakable. A sit down dinner with my family was not negotiable. No matter how busy I was or how behind I was, there was a mandatory break for the cooking and eating of an evening meal. This gave me a chance to check in with them and relate to them and express my love for them, and it also gave me a refreshing, much needed break from my mountain of work waiting for me in my office.

Two nights a week my office was closed at seven o'clock. This gave me the quality of life I was still seeking while trying to catch up and refreshed me for the next day. Those were the days I was in bed earlier rather than later, but I went to bed with the notion that my family received adequate attention from me.

I made weekend work optional. And while I chose to work most weekends, I did not do it at the breakneck speed I was trying to accomplish during the week. I was still accomplishing projects, but it was reasonable for my family to interrupt me and receive some attention throughout the weekend so that nobody felt left behind or ignored. My work at home overload slowly dwindled as I completed projects and turned away some work. However, there are still times that I hit work at home overload when I forget to pace myself.

Work at hoe overload generally results in sloppy work and annoyed clients because you are trying to accomplish as much as possible as quickly as possible. Breaks are important as they allow you to gather yourself and check what you're doing in order to complete the work but make it a positive experience for you and the client.

Work at Home Disruptions

Regardless of how many times you explain to family and friends that even though you are home you are still at work, there are bound to be disruptions. Work at home disruptions can become hindering and frustrating. They make you want to yell and snap and carry on about how hard you work and how everyone is taking you for granted just because they don't understand what it really means to work at home.

Work at home disruptions are guaranteed to be part of your daily life. You can minimize these interruptions by creating an office space that allows you to close the door without anyone finding a need to enter during office hours. Do not store things such as a vacuum cleaner in your office because sooner or later someone is going to need it at the exact wrong moment.

You can minimize work at home disruptions by remembering that the telephone has an answering machine. Hopefully you have two lines and even perhaps caller ID. No matter what your phone system is like, it is within your realm of possibilities to simply not answer it. If it is important, they will leave a message and you can return the call promptly, but you are not required to answer it every time it rings.

Navigating Work at Home Pitfalls

There will always be work at home disruptions, work at home overload, and work at home tax issues. There will be unforeseen moments in an average workday that will throw you for a loop and test your work at home willpower. If it is something that you really want you will find solutions to the issues that arise. Work at home issues need not be the end of your work at home career, they just may require a little creativity.

There is of course help and advice available to those that want it out there is cyberspace, not that we want to create our own work at home disruptions by surfing the web for eight hours a day, but there are accurate resources to help you along the way.

If you are interested in work at home solutions, visit "allworkathomeguide". Here you will find remedies and not only for your work at home issues, but even if you are just looking for another work at home business or idea. It is a valuable resource for those wishing to make the most of their time working at home.


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