Do you really want to work from home?
Why do you want to work from home?
I know that after I’d had two young children and gone back to work for a few years I got sick of the pressure of doing the mothering job and the corporate job at the same time. I decided that I would not work at all (at the corporate job!), and my husband decided to work from home some of the time.
It has really worked well for us. I got into making our equity do the work, and did lots of investing and share market strategies, and my husband gradually increased his hours working from home, before eventually ditching the corporate job, and consulting and working from home all the time.
So now we both have an office and work from home very happily. I’m upstairs and he’s downstairs, and we meet for lunch!
We have always been home when the kids come home from school, and have been able to be much involved with their lives than if we’d both been out til 6 or 7pm every night. We often go out for lunch – sometimes with local friends who also work from home. We are just about to have my husbands parent’s come to stay and have the flexibility of being able to spend time with them during the day, and probably work in the mornings for a little while and the evenings after they’ve gone to bed!
So I wonder what your reason is for wanting to work from home – and whether it will solve some hassles for you. Here is the results of a survey done recently on just this topic.
This research was conducted by McCrindle Research in June 2013 * based on a nationwide(Australia) study of 250 respondents who are currently or have previously worked from home
Work from Home – The Benefits
Here are the stated benefits in order of most to least number of responses:
Having the flexibility to juggle other things (45%)
Creating a work life balance to enjoy life more (25%)
Working undistracted (15%)
Taking care of the kids from home (12%)
Others benefits were:
decreased commuter stress
lower travel costs
less time spent getting ready to go to work
work in solitude
being my own boss
Work from Home – The Disadvantages
The 3 biggest disadvantages in response order were seen to be:
professional and social isolation (22%)
maintaining work-life balance (15%)
household distractions (14%)
(It is a bit amusing to me to note that 2 of the disadvantages were also 2 of the benefits! Maybe some people saw them as one, and some as the other!)
Other disadvantages were:
access and cost of necessary resources
perception that you’re not really working
self-motivation
lower income
poor communication with the office
no negative experiences
You can view the research summary yourself here:
http://www.mccrindle.com.au/ResearchSummaries/2013/Working-from-Home_The-Benefits-and-the-Cost_McCrindle-Research.pdf
If you are a freedom seeker (like me) then the option to work from home is most likely an attractive one, and will move you closer to the fabulous life that you really want. One of the reasons I help people to achieve financial independence to the degree that they want – is so they can have the freedom they crave to do what they really want in life.
Sometimes this involves not working at all.
Sometimes it means working part time.
And the option of working from home can often tick the boxes for a lot of the things that we want, while working doing something that we love.
If you already work from home, please reply (Click the heading of this article if you don’t see a reply box at the bottom) and tell us:
a) what the number one benefit for you is
b) what the number one disadvantage for you is.
