Childcare

If you are a work at home mom, you probably became one so you could spend more time with your children. However, there will most likely be times in your business when you will need to arrange for childcare. The following are some creative solutions to your childcare dilemmas.

WAHMs in direct sales are very often faced with childcare predicaments. A main portion of their business is conducting sales presentations, usually held at someone else’s home. If you are a party plan WAHM, the most obvious choice would be to schedule these presentations when your partner can watch the children, but what if your partner has an odd work schedule or you are a single parent? You can hire a local high school student to come to the party and be the “party nanny”. Check with the hostess first, but she will probably love the idea (and so will the other guests – since they won’t have to worry about getting a sitter for their children, they will be more likely to come to the party and the more guests you have, the bigger your profits!).

If you just need an occasional sitter, try setting up a “child care group” with your friends and neighbors. Each woman can designate a time frame on a certain day of the week or month to be “the sitter”. Any of the Moms in your “child care group” who need a sitter that day can drop their kids of at the “designated sitter’s” house. The children will get to play and interact with one another and each Mom can get free childcare on an “as needed basis”.

Check with your place of worship as they may offer a “Mom’s Day Out” type of program where you can drop your children off for a few hours per day, a couple times per week. This may be a free or low-cost service. Also, check with local library as they may have “story hours” where you can drop your children off and the librarians will read the children a book and after the book is read, the children can participate in a craft, game or activity.

If you just need some “quiet time” to do some work, you can hire a neighborhood teenager to come over and play with the kids while you are tucked away in your office. You will have some uninterrupted “work time”, but will still be there in case ‘something comes up’. If you have regular meetings that take you away from the house, check with friends and family to see if they can help out by watching the kids. Offer your product or service in exchange for their time. They may jump on the offer!

And don’t feel guilty if you need to put your children in daycare part-time. Yes, you may have had every intention of working at home in order to spend time with your children, but, there may be times when your business will need your total focus. By taking that time and completing your business tasks, you will be able to focus 100% on your children during family time.

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There are obvious pros to running a home business and working at home, such as not having a boss to micromanage you and not having to commute through that morning traffic. But, there are quite a few other advantages that are not quite as apparent. There are many expenses that a person working outside the home has to deal with, including many that you might not pay much attention to.

When working outside the home there are costs associated with buying and maintaining career clothing. These costs include of course the purchase of a wide variety of work clothes, which often have to be updated every year. But there are also the costs of alterations, dry cleaning and the time and transportation costs associated with those. Over the course of a year it can add up to quite an expense.

Another major expense for some, of course, is childcare. Even an inexpensive childcare facility can be $500 or more a month for childcare for only one child. Imagine the cost of high-quality care for one year. People with multiple children are often simply unable to afford this expense and opt to start a home business to avoid it.

The commute to work, even if it’s a relatively short distance away, is still costing you money. As fuel costs continue to rise, along with automobile repair expenses, the commute to work is getting more expensive by the month. The wear and tear on the car is an expense that often costs just as much as the fuel when you tally the oil change and repair costs. To be able to do your work from home is an amazing savings on commuting expenses, leaving you with a higher profit for your time.

Many people also benefit from the home office deduction, which is a nice savings on income taxes. The deduction allows for the expense of the portion of your home that is dedicated to the business, and makes the process of earning a profit even easier. With more money staying in your pocket, you can make a better profit with your business. Add to that the money you save from childcare costs, commuting costs and clothing, the amount of money you bring in with your home business counts for more than the amount you would make working for someone else. Even if you make only half what you did in an office job, much more of the money is staying with you, making your home business income higher than the income you had before.

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