What Are The Pros And Cons Of Working At Home?

Welcome back to the series, Things You Should Consider Before Starting To Work At Home.  Today we will be discussing the pros and cons of working from home.   There are some really good reasons for working at home but there are some negatives as well.  You need to consider all of your factors when you decide to work from home.

Some pros are:

• No boss standing over your shoulder.  You are your own boss.
• No more commuting back and forth which will save you time.  Time that would have been away from your family.
• You can do more work in less time.
• You will save money on lots of things like clothing, gas prices, day care expense, eating out, etc.
• Your stress level is more likely to go down.
• You can schedule your own work schedule so you will have more flexibility in your life.  You can do more family things, attend more functions with the kids at school, take the kids to doctor’s appointments, etc.

Now for the cons:

• Stepping off the career path you were following.  If you were on the sold career track, you might not be if you go home to work.
• Not enough space to work.  You need a separate space to work to stay organized.
• Feeling isolated from the world.  You had the social side of things when you were working in an office with others.
• No one to structure your day which can cause you to be less motivated.
• More temptation to do things with the family versus work.
• If you take a pay cut to come home and work, who will watch the kids.  You can’t work and watch them at the same time.
• Being taken seriously.  Unfortunately, it is a factor in today’s society that people that work at home are not taken seriously.  People think that means you aren’t working.  You have to really set down rules about working.
• Longer hours in some cases. 

You need to know before you set off to working at home, how you will balance your work life with your home life.  It’s a hard balance but it is possible.

Please stop by tomorrow for the second installment where we talk about setting up your home office space.

photo credit: theivorytower