Life of an Internet Entrepreneur

Telecommuting to work, or working from home, is becoming more common each year. The recent price hike on gas, now thankfully behind us, provided ample incentive for businesses to re-examine their policy on telecommuting, and may prove to be the catalyst for an already occurring trend. During the $4 gas period, some companies offered 4 day work-weeks (10 hours a day) and others permitted working from home, with weekly in-office meetings.

While the price of gas hurt businesses, it really took a toll on the daily driver. I figured this would be an opportune time to point out some advantages to working from home.

1. No Commute Each Day

The path to work is rife with hazards, time wasters, costs, and more. Let’s just run through some of those specifics for a moment and you’ll get my drift:

You are more likely to get a heart attack, lung cancer, and skin cancer by spending a lot of time driving. If you are thinking “well, I ride a train or bus to work,” you aren’t out of the woods just yet. Any number of these occur on trains: excess load on trains, terror attacks, drunk conductors, and I even found a case where a patron was thrown out of a moving train.

Whichever way you are traveling, it will cost you quite a bit of money over the course of a year. If you drive yourself, and want to find out, use this handy calculator to find out your real cost of driving to work.

On top of all of these, you have the increased risk of getting into an accident. The more time you spend on the road, (regardless of the type of vehicle you are traveling in) the more opportunities you have to get injured in a high speed collision, which you may not be the cause of. Is that a risk commuters are consciously taking into account?

Time is another valuable that is wasted by commuting. The average American spends over 100 hours each year commuting to and from work. This amounts to thousands of dollars in time you could have worked (or done something else you really wanted to). Now, some of you read during that trip to and from work, but would you really be reading that much if you weren’t forced to for lack of other options?

2. See Your Family More Often

A common complaint of commuters, (among others) is that they barely get to see their family, and when they do get back from work, they are always tired. This means their family time is likely to be lower quality.

By working from a home office you can be more involved in your kids and spouse’s lives, make sure you all eat dinner together (proven to have positive effects on kids), and communicate better. This all adds up to happier families and lower stress.

3. Save on Child Care

Child care is a cost that can wildly range between $5,000 a year to over $14,000, depending on the age, number of kids, and type of care. This cost should always be considered when calculating how much you are really making at your out-of-home job. Here is a step by step guide to doing just that.

By working from your home office, you can usually cut down on most or all of that cost, especially if you setup your home office by the play room to keep an eye on your little bundles of joy.

4. Eat Healthful Food

Let’s face it, most people who travel to work are eating restaurant food. While there are health food restaurants out there, there are many more fast food and dessert type restaurants. Now, you might reply by saying that the worker can make his own lunch at home, but that costs time and energy, two things he is likely to be short on considering the time and energy it takes to commute each day two times. This means the odds are highly in favor of the worker just picking up food at his workplace or close to it.

If you work at home, you can make your own health food, and also keep close watch on the sanitation in the kitchen, a growing concern of ours among the recent stories coming from restaurants.

5. Save Money on Lunch

You may not be aware of this, but a restaurant is considered to be “running smoothly” if the actual food costs on their side constitute anywhere from just 15-25 percent of the price you pay - and we’re not even counting the tax and tips!. The rest of the price goes into a dizzying array of other costs the restaurant needs to do to offer you the food.

By eating lunch at home, you are able to cut out over 75% of your food cost, 5 days a week. That adds up. In fact, working from home, you’ll also save money by not going out for happy hour outings, buying coffee, and other money wasters that most workers end up doing.

6. No Dress Code

While dressing up occasionally is certainly fun, I would find it rather cumbersome to worry about each day. The feet hurt after a long day, there is ample opportunity to spill something on relatively expensive clothing, and it’s a pain to constantly dry clean or iron in order to have your suit in tip top shape. There’s also the high cost of buying and maintaining enough of the dress clothes to have a daily selection.

By working from home, you have at least some leeway on what you can wear, and I know plenty of people who work at home and throw on a t-shirt or polo and a pair of jeans. This saves time (and money) by wearing what is comfortable and has a low cost of maintenance, as opposed to business clothes.

7. Work Anytime

Didn’t finish your work, or have a headache now? No problem, you don’t have to wait until the office is unlocked the next morning to work on that approaching deadline. True, some offices are already using services like GoToMyPC, but most do not, and many don’t permit you to take work home (for fear of you lifting important proprietary information).

8. Lower Taxes

The IRS sets rules for how deductions can be taken if you have a home-based office, again giving you an advantage over the typical office worker. While the advantages are far greater if you are self-employed, there are still deductions you may be able to take as an employee working at home. For the purposes of this article, I’ll assume you are an employee, and not self-employed.

What can be deducted? A business portion of real estate taxes, mortgage interest, rent, utilities, insurance, painting, repairs and depreciation. According to the IRS, if you are an employee

you can claim this deduction only if the regular and exclusive business use of the home is for the convenience of your employer and the portion of the home is not rented by the employer.

To explain, as a home working employee you have to set aside a particular area of your home to use for business, and it’s has to be used only for business. Also, the employer has to see it as a convenience for his business to have you working from home. Here are some tips for convincing your boss that having you work from home is for his convenience.

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons to work from home, and I’m sure I’ve even missed a few more. Given the economy, now is a ripe time to take a look into working from home, and having a better quality of life.