While being home is great and so far superior to commuting, it can get lonely. You should take regular ‘breathers’ to get away and change your scenery. If you don’t, it can feel depressing and smothering, and even ‘tied down’ like your day job. No matter how much fun you are having with your home business, you need to refresh your browser!
You need to be able to stop working sometimes even though it is midnight and you can’t go outside for a walk or go shopping to get away from it. You also obviously need to sleep and to rest and relax. Make an appointment or schedule this with yourself, if necessary. You don’t need to get run down and burned out. Add moderation to both sides of the coin in order to maintain a balance.
On the other hand, if you do stay home a lot as a rule, why not do something productive with your home. Make it generate money to help with the bills. Make it a better atmosphere. Your home can be something that would be very easy to monetize!
There are benefits that you can get from your taxes if you are running a business in your home even part-time. You can deduct a percentage of all your housing costs – rent or mortgage, utilities, equipment, communications, (Internet service, phone, etc). These would also include direct business expenses like advertising, technical services, software, etc). There are schedules you file with your regular itemized personal income taxes (Form 1040), that are for use of your home for business, *(form 8829) and profit or loss from business (*schedule C); (and of course self-employment tax (*schedule SE).
You can file these deductions for a certain number of years even if you do not make any profit from your home business. However, if after a few years time you have not made any profit then it would be considered a hobby at that point and as such you wouldn’t be able to deduct any more business expenses. Why not have a hobby that you can earn a little money with!? Don’t give up on your home business even if you have to do without all the deductions. Who knows what will happen next year?
You can also look at your home business as a learning experience. You may, over time, develop a very profitable business. If you work all day, you may have a problem accepting more work when you get home, working on your days off, etc.. That is not so much the case if you enjoy working and you love working from home. Your problem might be how to stop working! 😉
