If you are a mom, you know it’s hard balancing everything in life. From bringing kids to school and sports, to meal planning every week, to making sure everyone has clean underwear. It’s a tough job being a good mom! Add working from home to that to-do list and you have yourself a sure-fire recipe for stress!
We’ve got 5 tips to help you find balance between mom life and working from home so you don’t lose your mind.
Finances come first
Budgeting, re-budgeting and staying on top of your expenses becomes twice as hard when you have to balance a business and a home life that both exist in the same space. Work expenses can slide into home budget territory and lead to tax problems or financial uncertainty more easily than you might think.
Even if your budget is solid, you still have to consider ever-expanding operating expenses, insurance, existing debts and future financial mysteries. Do you keep track of your credit score to ensure your debts are accurate reflections of your ability to handle finances? Do you dread looking at your bank account? Have you set up insurance policies with settlement options in case you need operating cash or to bolster an early retirement fund? Have you planned out your post-retirement? It’s a lot of numbers to crunch but half of the battle is knowing what to plan for and paying attention to your budget accordingly.
Don’t stumble into multi-level marketing
If you spend much time on social media you’ve doubtlessly seen ads or a friend’s post about the wonders of selling a product from home while also being your own boss. While a fun idea from the outside, the realities of most of these programs are akin to pyramid schemes that exist only to funnel money up to whoever hired you, who then hands that money off to their boss and so on.
If an employer expects you to pay them money before you join in, bow out! Unless you happen to be the one mom out of millions upon millions who have tried the same routes to making money from home, you’ll likely end up with damaged friendships and serious debt. As always, deals that sound too good to be true usually are.
Balancing work and parenting isn’t easy
Nothing is more difficult than telling your children you can’t spend time with them and have to spend time working instead. It’s not fun, but a work and home life balance always requires sacrifices that take time to become accustomed to. Socializing is still an important part of your entrepreneurship yet allowing it to swallow your working hours will only lead to problems in the future.
Don’t be afraid to set specific rules about how your time will be doled out through the day if you can manage to keep to a timetable realistically. There will always be accidents and meal times to attend to, but keeping distractions low and your children self-entertained means you can finish up your work more quickly and spend quality time with them rather than staring at the clock during short breaks.
Moms make better workers
Are you concerned about how motherhood might be a detriment on a résumé if you decide to return to the workforce? While it is true that an unfair “motherhood penalty” might loom over your future salary, the realities of being a mother makes for valuable life experience that can be turned into a serious boon in nearly any workplace.
Between a deepening of your emotional intelligence down to the way your brain fundamentally changes the way it works to orient itself towards productivity and resilience, motherhood is something to be touted as a positive in an interview, not some sort of anchor that might take you out of the workplace. If a business can’t come to grips with that, they probably aren’t worth your time in the first place.
Don’t be afraid to dip your toes into the waters of self-employment and entrepreneurship just because you have children to watch out for. Like any major life experience, motherhood can help you achieve new goals and provide for your loved ones in a way that rejoining a traditional workplace could never compare to.
