The Pros and Cons of Working From Home

If you’ve decided to start a work from home business, you should realize something — life has a certain balance: there’s no pleasure without pain, and there are no pros without cons.

Here’s a look at the upsides and downsides of a work from home business.

Pro: Independence. You do what you want, when you want. No one else can screw up your hard work, and you don’t need to depend on anyone but yourself. Your days of being told what to do are over — and there’s no dress code, either! Many people who work from home admit to sitting around in their pajamas all day, or even working in the nude.

Con: No Security. With independence, though, comes responsibility. There’s nobody to carry you if you do badly one day — if you don’t make any money for the business, then you don’t get paid. People like certainty in their lives (that’s why they spend big bucks on insurance) — it can be hard to live with this ultimate step into performance-related pay. You might find yourself quickly wishing you had a regular pay cheque again.

Pro: Flexible Work Hours. You decide your hours. If you want to take Wednesday off and work Saturday instead, then no one will prevent you from doing what you want. If you want to get up early and stuff all your work into the mornings so you can have the afternoons off, then hey, you’re the boss. Such flexibility can be a massive relief after years of working nine to five.

Con: There is No End to the Work. When you work from home, it can be tempting to be constantly monitoring everything, even when you’ve decided you’re not working. The only person who can handle a crisis is you — and crises have a tendency to happen in the middle of the night, or on your day off.

Pro: Keeping All the Money. Everything you earn is yours. It can be truly disheartening to work somewhere where cash is being handled, and realizing that the takings for the day adds up to a hundred times more than you’ve got paid. You know that someone’s getting rich off of you, but it’s certainly not you — working from home makes you the fat cat at the top.

Con: Doing Everything. Not all that money was profit, you know. It goes for things like marketing, management, stock control, deliveries, and so on. Suddenly you have to manage everything that has to do with your business — you deal with suppliers on one end and customers on the other, you have to do all the budgeting and spending, and you become your own marketing department. You get to deal with all the fun tax issues as well.

Pro: No More Commuting. Commuting is expensive, and at times it feels like a complete waste of time — just think of all the time and money most people spend traveling to and from work. When you have a home business, you just get up and you’re right next to your workplace — isn’t that convenient?

Con: One Less Room. Your house may feel a much smaller after you’ve set one room aside as your ‘home office’. When you’re not working, it’s just there, useless, and at the same time your kids are upset at how small their bedrooms are.

Pro: A Healthier Lifestyle. When you only have an hour’s lunch break to do everything you need to do, you can end up running yourself into the ground and not eating properly. Working from home lets you do your errands when you want, and eat good food every day.

Con: The Loneliness. If you’re the only one around in your house during the day, distractions are avoided — but it can also get very lonely. If you’re the kind of person who likes being around other people, you may get quite depressed.

But …

If you talk to anyone who works from home, they’ll probably say that the pros far outweigh the cons. Once you’re doing your own thing and feeling great, it’s hard to go back to a salaried existence — and remember, it’s far easier to work around your problems in a home business than it is to deal with any problems you might have at work.

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