Preparing to Work From Home - Part One

I have been preparing for a long time to become self employed. I have been working at being a word smith for nearly a decade now. With some recent changes in my personal and family life new opportunities have become available. As most of you already know, if you have been reading my work for a while now, is that we are buying seven acres of land out in the country, just outside a really nice little town here in Arkansas. That is still happening. We are planning to move to living full time there late this year or early next. What I want to discuss something else here though.

I work in a sheet metal shop. I have worked in this field off and on since I was nine years old and told my father I was not going to school one day. He said to get in the car and I replied that I was not going to school. He said he was not taking me to school. He took me to work at the sheet metal shop he worked at. This was the 80's so things were a lot more relaxed than they are today. Next door was the police department. Many of the officers there thought it was funny that I was so young and how my father was handling my attitude.

Where my dad messed up was he let me keep 25% of my paycheck. I made $3.15 an hour. I swept floors and threw metal away. Little stuff. I learned how to lay out a square to round by 12 years old and was doing quite well with things. I worked at the shop over most summer vacations and as often as I could when school was out. Later I was sent to a continuation school where I attended half a day four days a week and worked the shop most of the time I had out of classes.

I had a taste of making money regularly. It was great.

Anyhow, I learned rather quickly that the real people making money there were the owners of the company. Those owners mostly stayed in the office and travelled when not in the office. I knew I wanted to be a boss someday.

Writing has not always paid well

This is why my wife and me have decided to keep a nest egg available. Something to cover those periods where we are having a bad month. This will help us weather the bad times. We will have our comfortable nest egg saved up by December of this year.

So what are the steps to working from home?

First, I am going to meet with an accountant later this month/early next. I want to find out what I can deduct and what I cannot. I need to know what to pay and when.

 

Next I am going to get a business license for my business. Arkansas is extremely lenient here but I still need to register that I am running a home based business. This will help me with sales tax and deductions for my business.

Then there are the unknowns that pop up. We have plans for me to start full time home employment on January 1st 2018. That gives us about four to five months to get everything lined up.

My secret to working at home

I am not too good to do a job. Simple. If I can possibly do it for a decent price and make a profit then I will probably do it. I focus on writing and Ebay reselling. Your situation may be different and my method of turning a profit may not work for you.

We had to figure out how much money we needed per month to live like we do right now with my working a full time job. That is our goal every month. Everything I do from Upwork, Steemit, Fiverr, Freelancer, Elance, advertising sales, etc adds up to more than what we need to live. The extra is put into our nest egg which will grow and shrink as business changes.

It is scary to realize that my days as an employee for someone else are almost over. I am going to be 41 years old in August. I have been doing sheet metal as an adult since I was 19 (not counting the years as a minor). It is simply awe inspiring too that it is almost time to close this book and start a new one.