There are benefits to running a home business when you have kids. You’ll likely see more of your family and you won’t have to waste time and money commuting. However, there could also be certain drawbacks – your work life may start to negatively interfere with your family life and vice versa. By finding a way to separate both lives, you can prevent them from negatively affecting one another. Below are a few ways to do this.
Find somewhere private to work from
If your kids are running around you while you work, you likely won’t be able to concentrate. If you have to make important business calls, it could also affect your professionalism. For this reason, it’s worth finding a private area in your home that you can convert into a home office. This could be a spare room or part of another room that you can close the door to. Ideally, this space should be used purely for working – when in this space, you can get into work mode, and when out of this space you can switch to family mode.
Home business – Create a separate business account
Separating your personal and business finances could be important too. This gives you separate money to spend on you and your family and separate money to spend on your business. This could also help to make accounting easier and could also be legally necessary if you plan to set up a limited company. When it comes to your business finances, you want to make sure that you are doing everything possible to keep them ticking over, just like you would with your personal ones. It would be a good idea to look into a free business credit report to help improve cashflow and reduce any bad debt such as outstanding payments from companies you have worked with.
Use a separate work phone
So that you’re not having to answer work calls when you’re with your family, it could be worth buying yourself a separate work phone. This can be turned off when you don’t want to deal with work matters. At the same time, you may be able to mute notifications on your personal phone when working so that you don’t get distracted. There are business phone contracts that you can take out for work phones as listed here at TechRadar.
Home business – Consider a virtual address
Need to accept physical business mail, but don’t want to give out your home address to clients? A virtual mailing address could be a solution to this. This is an address that you outsource – your mail is sent to this address and then relayed onto you. You can outsource a virtual address via companies like PhysicalAddress. Renting a virtual address often doesn’t cost much.
Schedule designated work and family time
Running a business gives you the flexibility to work when you want. However, it could still be worth setting yourself a weekly schedule in which you start work at a certain time and plan to finish at a certain time. This will help you to mentally get in the zone for work without getting distracted by family, while also helping you to relax when enjoying family time instead of worrying about work. It could also help if you need to arrange childcare on a consistent basis.
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