Should You Start Working at Home While Working Outside the Home?

The ability to work at home is a great goal to have, but it can be a bit of a trap too. You can feel like you have to find a work at home opportunity that will allow you to replace your current income before you can make the jump.

Ever think that making the move in stages might make more sense?

Lots of people do it that way. It’s rough, and eats horrendously into family time, but the sacrifice can be worth it. It’s a chance to get things going without the worry that your family will suffer financially.

The Good Part About Starting When You Already Have a Job

There’s good and bad to getting a slow start to working at home. The good is that you have less financial pressure to succeed. Your current job is hopefully enough to keep your family going, even if you aren’t entirely satisfied with the lifestyle.

That cuts a lot of pressure out, giving you more time to really think about what you want to do and to do your due diligence before spending any money or sharing any information.

It also gives you time to build up an income. If you choose a home business, this is likely vital. Most home businesses are not successful right at the start. If your family needs the money from your current work you may be best off not gambling on your ability to build a stable income from home quickly.

You will also enjoy the added time to educate yourself. You can read up on the work you’ll be doing.

You can make connections and network with other work at home parents, both within your industry and who do other kinds of work. A good network will help you to build your business and help you with many challenges. LinkedIn is a good place to start for online professional networking; your local Chamber of Commerce is good for professional networking in person.

The Bad Part

Perhaps the worst part of starting to work at home while still holding down a regular job is the pressure. You have to do your best at both. You lose time with your family.

The amount of time it takes can be difficult. It’s not uncommon to need several months, a year or more to build a decent work at home income.

Combining working outside the home with working at home is also likely to slow down your progress in whatever you do at home. It’s tough to work a regular job, raise a family and start a home business or other work at home job. There’s only so much time in the day and you do have to sleep sometime.

However you get started it’s a big decision, and there will be a lot of difficult decisions and risks to take. But the path is likely to be worth it.