Whether you have decided to quit your job and work from home or are facing redundancy and think that working from home will provide you with greater job security, there are some things to bear in mind before you do: you should try to make sure that you have at least six months’ worth of income in your account before you quit your job. The fact is that self-employment has its own troughs and high points and you need something to tide you over when work is thin on the ground.
Remote working may sound like a great idea but if you fall sick there is no sickness benefit to tide you over, so you do need to allow for this when it comes to pricing your services. Take a long hard look at your existing finances to see whether you could manage for the first six months.
Self-employment may sound like a great idea but it could take a while to get your business off the ground. Freelance work is not always consistent, one week there will be plenty of work and the next two may provide nothing at all. Many freelancers now pay more attention to any work they do for repeat clients because these can provide a more reliable source of income. You should put five or ten percent of what you earn into a separate account for those times when you are unable to work for whatever reason.
No Office Gossip
Whether you work in an office, a shop or on the factory floor you do get used to being around other people. No matter how busy people are at work they do seem to find time for a bit of a gossip with their colleagues. When you are working remotely, you may not have contact with anyone from one end of the day to the other. While you may think that working for yourself would be a dream come true, unless you can deal with the silence and are content with your own company, it might not be as idyllic as you imagine.
Well, You Are at Home
You will need to get used to the fact that people assume, because you are at home, that you have loads of free time. You will get requests to feed cats, let out the dog and take in the post. You need to develop a thick skin if you are to make a success of working from home, the ability to say no will be your greatest friend. You have to start as you mean to go on; let people know that you don’t want social phone calls, house calls, or any requests during your working hours. While you may be inclined to help out if a real emergency occurs, for the most part they need to accept that working at home is still working. Just because you don’t catch the 7.45 to the office, doesn’t mean you have all the time in the world on your hands.
Written by Amy Fowler on behalf of Maintel. Maintel can help those looking to work remotely. For more information, visit their site.
Featured image courtesy of pinguino.
