Teaching Your Family That Working From Home Is A Real Job
Contributed by Beth Pratt, Editor WAHM Thing
 It can be hard to try to convince people that working at home is a real job, especially if you live in a rural area where wages are earned with sweat-drenching and back-breaking, manual labor. In a place where everything is done the old-fashioned way and only a 7-4 job counts, staying at home to work is frowned upon. But people are getting the same response no matter what area of the country they live in, even though soaring gas prices makes staying at home to work quite a bit more practical. How can you convince your loved ones that working at home is a job?
What you do is as important as where you do it Depending on the kind of job you do at home, you may receive a different reaction from your family: Non-traditional jobs: These are the most prolific types of work-at-home jobs, and many are scams (think MLM, stuffing envelopes, or assembling products at home). While you may make some money filling out surveys or typing data in a computer, this can hardly be considered a “job” no matter how you look at it. Making the equivalent of three dollars an hour is not financially sound, so if you’re doing this kind of work, go back in the hopes of becoming rich, you’re better off going back to your day job. |
Freelancing: Whether you write, design web pages or walk dogs, with freelancing the trick is addressing your family’s concerns that your job is never far from unemployment. So is the freelancer’s life, but you can often make your family feel better by making a deal with them. Tell them you will return to a more stable position if you don’t get so many gigs/jobs/bids per month…make sure you put in the stipulation that they must give you a month to gain one or two clients. They’ll see that once you have established yourself, the jobs will keep rolling in.Work-at-home Company: If you’re going in to business for yourself, you’ll probably hear your family harping about how unpredictable and costly it will be to start your own business. These are both valid concerns. Try pointing family members to the success stories, like Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) and Dave Thomas (Wendy’s). If that doesn’t work, show them your taxpayer I.D. number and your business license. Your show of confidence should make them back off enough to give you a running start.
A Real-Life Scenario
You know that working at home is better than clocking in at an office. But it’s harder to convince your family. If they are skeptical no matter how much you try to put them at ease, let them see the math. Below is a play-by-play of a typical day in the life of a commuter versus a stay-at-home worker.
6am: Alarm clock goes off; you shower, get dressed and warm the car
7am: Leave for work and battle morning rush hour
8am: Clock in at work
12pm: Take your unpaid lunch
1pm: Start the second half of your day
5pm: Clock out, drive through evening rush hour traffic
6pm: Arrive home to start fixing dinner
This is a very simplified version of the typical commuter’s day. It doesn’t take into consideration any errands that have to be run after work, including those to the bank or grocery store. Now, let’s look at a typical work-at-home day:
6am: Alarm clock goes off; you choose to get up…eat breakfast and read the paper
7am: “Clock in” at your computer or telephone
11am: Take a leisurely lunch and watch television for a few minutes
12pm: Start the second half of your day
4pm: “Clock out,” leave your office and flip the television on in the living room
If you were paying attention, you noticed the following differences between the out-of-home work schedule and the in-home work schedule:
1.   After considering the time it takes to get ready for work and the commute time, commuters work twelve hours a day and only get paid for eight. Compare that to 8 hours of work for 8 hours of pay.
2.   With a commute job, drivers spend anywhere between $50-$200/week on fuel costs, not to mention wear-and-tear on their vehicles. True work-at-homers have no fuel costs at all.
3.   Unless they pack their lunch every day, commuters spend $5-$10/day on food and vending machine snacks. Food from the fridge at home is a lot cheaper.
4.   Commuters pay anywhere from $150-$300/week on childcare. Home workers can split that cost in half or quarter it, since they can choose their work schedules to minimize the need for a babysitter.
Clearly the math supports work-at-home positions, and nobody can argue with finances, not even your family—your greatest critics. Show them the logic of working at home. Maybe they’ll decide to take the plunge too!
Beth Pratt is a work at home mom and editor for Its a WAHM Thing, a blog covering all aspects of balancing your home-based career and raising a family. Beth is the proud mother of two boisterous boys: Theakston aged 5 and Alwyn aged 2.