Your Work at Home Guide

The days are quite long when you take no time out for something fun.  If you are like me and you are working and working away and starting to feel stressed out about how much you have to do, then you need to take a fun break.  Taking the fun break not only rejuvenates you, but it also helps you put things back in to perspective.

Some things you can do on your fun break:

*Play with your kids.  Sometimes my daughter and I will play Old Maid or Go Fish.  Two games is all we both need to get back to work.  Her to her schooling and me to my articles.

*Play an online game.  My two favorites are Majong and Family Feud.  My daughter likes Webkinz.  Again playing 2 or 3 games is all you need.  You can always take another fun break later on and play some more.

*Play hopscotch.  Outdoor activities are great fun breaks on beautiful days.  A few games of hopscotch or 15 minutes of kicking the soccer ball around will work wonders for your motivation.

You can do just about anything that your family enjoys to take a break or two throughout the day.  Just make sure you don’t let it go on longer than 30 minutes or it really isn’t considered a fun break, but more of a time off.

AvantGuild is mediabistro’s premium membership association.  They charge $49 for a one year subscription or $78 for a two year subscription.  That gives you access to all kinds of things including jobs, resume helps, tax helps, etc.  But the main benefit is the health and dental insurance plans offered to all AvantGuild members.

Details:

Dental Insurance:  You can get a dental plan for as little as $60 for individual, or $84 for your entire family.

Health Insurance:  This rate varies depending upon which plan you are interested in choosing.  Most member report saving $400 per MONTH on their insurance by switching to plans offered here.  That’s an annual savings of $4800.  That’s a really nice family vacation right there!  AvantGuild offers over 750,000 providers and 6000 facilities nationwide.

Now being a freelancer is great because you can actually get great benefits for your family without paying an arm and a leg.  The annual membership fee is small in comparison to the savings you are going to get.

If you are interested in learning more just do a search for AvantGuild in your favorite search engine.

Did you know if you work from home you can claim part of your house as a tax deduction?  Even if you don’t have a home office you can still claim part of your home.

Here is how it works:

If you have a home office you can claim that room by submitting the information of how many rooms you have in your house total.  I have 1 office and 12 total rooms in my home.  So my deduction for expenses and everything is 1/12th.  Yes, you can deduct that percent in electricity, gas, homeowners insurance, property tax, etc.

If you are just using a part of your house, but not a whole room you must find out how many square feet you are using verses how many square feet your entire house is.  That would be the percent you could deduct.

Telephone’s are tricky.  You can’t deduct the use of your personal phone unless you can prove certain long distance calls were made solely for business purposes.  It would be better to get a business line put in or skip out on deducting for the phone altogether.

If you rely on the Internet for your income than you can deduct your Internet charges.

I  am not an accountant so make sure you take this information to your accountant or use an online software program to help you.

If you want to work at home with your business for the long haul, than it is essential that you get some business cards.  There are several inexpensive ways to do this.

1.  Go to Staples or your local stationary store and purchase a box of blank business cards.   They have plenty of different styles to choose from.  This is how my mother got business cards when she began her real estate company.  Take them home and design your business card on your computer.  Now print them out.  You can laminate them if you think that would make them look better.

2.  Go to Vista Print.  That is where I got all of my business cards.  All you have to do is pay shipping and handling and the prices are great.  I’ve also gotten magnets, postcards, and even a T-shirt all for just the cost of shipping.  I am not an affiliate for them, I am just letting you know about this resource.  There is just one thing to watch out for.  When you make your purchase don’t click anything else.  People have said they ended up signing up for something on accident they didn’t want and it charged their credit card.  I have never had that problem and I feel it is really safe as long as you are not clicking around at things you are unsure of.

Of course if you want to shell out the money you can hire a professional printer to design and print your business cards, but it really isn’t necessary.

Once you have your business cards hand them out every chance you get.   Most restaurants have a bowl you can drop your business card in to to win prizes.  You can also use your business card to place ads in the newspaper’s or on placemats.  Grocery stores have a spot you can pin up your business card.  This wil generate some great traffic for you.  Business cards really are an asset.

Okay, this post is really a lot more for me than for you.  My biggest downfall working online is that I forget to stop and get some exercise.  My Dad owns a newspaper and works from his computer, but makes it a point to take a walk with his wife every day.

Making money should actually be second in priority to our health for without our health we wouldn’t be able to work.  Sitting behind a computer all day does absolutely nothing good for our bodies.

Here are a few quick tips that I promise I am going to start implementing myself:

1.  Between each online task stop and do 5 of either sit-ups, jumping jacks, push ups, or leg squats.

2.  After your lunch break use a work out video for 20 minutes.

3.  When you have completed your assignments for the day take a walk in the park.

Just doing a little something here and there will not only be excellent free medicine for your body, but it will increase your energy and make you more productive when you get back to working online.

This post is mostly for individuals that want to work at home online. They say that 98% of people who want to make it online fail. I believe that the reason for this is they don’t give themselves enough time.

When you decide to start investigating online work at home jobs and businesses you need to realize that it is going to take time to learn what is a scam, what isn’t, and what kind of work you really like doing. I worked online for a couple of years before I really started making it. It took me that time to learn what was out there and what I was good at (and what I wasn’t).

What I recommend is you keep your day job until you are making the kind of money you would like to make. Pretend you are taking college courses at night and give yourself that time to get familiar with the work at home industry. One lady I knew did it this way and after 2 years she was able to begin working part time at her current job instead of full time and 1 year after that she was making a full time living online and didn’t need her regular job.

So don’t give up after you have spent 6 months looking around. Realize it takes time to reach your dream and never give up on that!