Being a Stay at Home Wife and Mom While Freelancing

There are benefits of working from home while being a stay at home wife and mom.  I love getting to have this as an option.  It keeps me busy, but I have more control of the schedule and what goes on than working outside the home.  I have worked outside the home with one child and will do it if I have to, but I would rather not, if I don’t have to.

Here is how Freelancing and being a stay at home wife and mom works for me and my family:

• I get to make my schedule.  I only take on jobs that will work around what is going on with the family.  I don’t take jobs where I have to work during certain hours.  I work around what the children are doing, when my husband needs my help, what is going on with church and any other activities on the calendar.
• I can pick my workload and my pay rate.  I take on what I can handle.  I make sure I am getting paid what I am worth and the time I spend working on the project.  I may have many contracts going on at one time, but I know when things are due and make sure I meet those deadlines.
• I look for jobs interesting to me and what I want to work on.  I decide what I do and what I don’t do.
• It saves my family money.  We don’t pay for child care, gas to get to and from work.  I just pay for taxes on what I make.  The rest is what I can use for the family needs.  This allows me the ability to put more money towards the family.

If you are in need of work, whether it is more work to help the finances or just getting back into the workforce, this is a great way to do this.  I work with oDesk and another agency.  If you need help getting started with either one, just leave a comment and I will be happy to help you with this.  Also feel free to ask questions about what I do, what I use to track my work, track my income and expenses and a sample of my goals.  You don’t always need to reinvent the wheel, sometimes you just need a way to get started and with some tweaking you are able to make it work for you.

How I Started Freelancing…

Many of you may be wondering how I got started with freelancing and I thought it might be helpful if you knew how that all got started for me.  The reason people start freelancing will vary based on the person, but no matter why you start, you have a reason why you started and remembering that is important, even if the reasons change on why you started freelancing.

I started freelancing because my family was in need of the extra income, but I didn’t want to have to work outside the home if I didn’t have to.  We had a little girl who was just over 1 years old and I didn’t want to have to put her in child care if I didn’t have to.  My husband had a job that was o.k. and paying the bills, but making the budget tight as we never knew how much he was getting paid each week as the amount of miles he drove varied week to week.  I was trying to think of a way I could help with the family income while being home with our daughter, being pregnant for our 2nd child and being home when my husband was.

I started looking into home businesses and soon found many of them wanted you to send in money to get started.  I wasn’t about to start with this kind of program.  So looking for a way I could work from home, with the least amount of up front cost was necessary.  I learned all kinds of new terminology like VA means Virtual Assistant.

Then I had to look at how I where I would start getting my business and what really interested me.  I really enjoy writing, editing and proofread.  Then I found oDesk and decided to give it a try.  It was discouraging at first because I was applying for jobs and not getting hired.  I started out at $10/hr., figuring I was worth that amount, but I didn’t have any feedback.  So I decided to move my rate to $8/hr. and was careful about what jobs I did take on, as I didn’t want to just take on any job.  I slowly started getting hired for jobs I was applying for, which encouraged me.  Then after a while I was getting invites to interview for jobs I hadn’t applied for.

As I was getting feedback, reading the oDesk blog and thinking about what I was being paid, I finally decided to raise my hourly rate for new clients.  But that didn’t change when it came to the jobs I now have.  I asked for a raise from one of my clients and was denied the raise, so I said it was time for me to move on.  I had been with him a year before I asked for the raise.

There are a few things to consider when freelancing, whether you use places like oDesk or not.  They include:

• Being willing to start a little low, but once you start getting good feedback, start to raise your rate.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for a raise if you have been with someone for a while, especially if you are paid hourly.  But make sure you can make your case for the raise and be realistic with the amount you are asking for.  This means, it may take a while to get to the point you have changed your rate to.
• Don’t underestimate what you can do.  I have gained new skills I never had before.  An example would be I am now blogging, which is a skill I can add to my list of what I can offer.  This is a way to keep up the skills you do have along with learning new skills.
• Know what you can do realistically, both when it comes to your workload and what you can and cannot do.  Even if you have the time to do it, is it something you really can do?  Or just because it is one of your skills, do you really have the time to do it?
• I don’t have set hours I work, but get the work done in a timely manner, by the due date.  I have 3 young children, so I do this around what is going on with them and what help I need to give my husband.
• Find a system that works for you.  This means, know how you track your work, when and how you work and what your limits are.

Freelancing has been an answer to prayer for my family.  I will continue to do it as long as I can and it is needed.  It allows me to stay competitive in the workforce while controlling my workforce and workload.

Why Do I Work From Home? Here Is Why.

Being able to work from home has been a blessing for my family.  We need the help financially, but when looking at all the options of me working outside the home it doesn’t seem to make sense financially.

I work from home for many reasons.  Here are a few of them:

• Day care would take up most of, if not all of my paycheck as we have 3 who would need full-time care.
• I would have to get a job that pays me a minimum of $20/hr. to take care of taxes that would come out, pay for child care, pay for gas in the van, and have any left over to help pay for any bills.
• I can work what I do from home and do it around what we have going on.  So if we have Doctors appointments, etc.  I can get work done during naps, before the kids get up in the morning, once the kids go to bed at night, etc.  I don’t have to pay for child care.
• I can raise our children.  I would miss things if I worked outside of the home.  For example, this morning I had folded a load of clothes and my almost 4-year-old said, “I will put my clothes away.  Thank you mommy for doing my laundry.”  How else could I teach my kids about putting laundry away, picking up after themselves and even about healthy activities?
• I can pick the work that is the best fit for me and allows me to work around our schedule.
• I can still take care of the home.

I love being able to do this type of work.  I am able to be the wife and mom God has called me to be while also using my other gifts and talents and helping the family financially.