Category: Employment

Day Care Business for Work At Home Moms Part 4

[continued from Part 3]

 

The benefits of an at-home daycare business

 

Despite the long start up time, many Work At Home Moms find that owning their own in-home childcare center is a great solution to their work at home problem. There are many benefits to taking care of other people’s children.

Your children will never be without playmates to entertain them. You’ll have access to many fun and exciting programs made especially for daycare business owners, including discounts on supplies, and of course, many of your expenses can be written off on your taxes if you set up your company correctly.

Remember to keeep receipts for everything you buy and note if it was personal, or for your at home business.   You may even be eligible for federal subsidies for food and diapers for the children you take care of.

 

Research your topic

To find out if owning a home daycare is right for you, research the subject. Visit other home daycares and ask how those Wahms are enjoying their business. Find out what your state and local regulations are regarding licensed and unlicensed daycare.

Do a trial run with multiple children by volunteering to look after your friends’ children for an hour or two at a time, say on a Saturday morning so they can go shopping unhindered but not leave you alone with them all day.

Work out what hours your facility is going to be open. My sister in law drops off her son at 7 every morning and picks him up at 6 every night.  That is a pretty long workday for some people.

You need to work out your fees so that they are competitive with other daycare facilities in the area, and also need to decide what to do if one of the parents is running late. It is important to keep the client happy, but you also need to balance your work and family time as well so that everyone is pleased with the arrangement.

Also keep in mind that you will basically be stuck at home if you take on this job. What are your contingency plans if you run out of milk, or in the event of an unexpected emergency?

Working at home affects the entire family, especially your own children having to interact with other children, and share your time with them.  What will your support system be?

Once you’ve done your homework, and are able to answer all these key questions and discuss them with your husband, friends and family, you’ll know if childcare as a work at home opportunity is right for you.

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Day Care Business for Work At Home Moms Part 3

[continued from Part 2]

Another important difference between looking after other people’s children as a nanny or teacher or daycare worker, and going into business for yourself, is that it takes time to build up a list of children who will attend your daycare. There are many home daycare centers to choose from in every town. Once parents find a good center they normally stay there long term.

Finding new clients can be difficult, especially if you don’t take care of infants or babies. However, there is often a reason why day care facilities refuse to take children under six months, usually to do with safety issues, and whether or not the child has had its vaccinations.

So you might find a niche specializing in small babies for those women who really need to go back to work but can’t find a daycare facillity willing to take a child under 6 months. It can be more demanding work in some senses, but then so can chasing around toddlers, and multiple kids in the terrible Twos stage.

Getting clients can be easier when you are licensed, but to begin with you need to rely on networking with parenting groups, people at your church, people in your community and friends in order to build your business.

Now that we have got the negative aspects out of the way, it’s time to consider the benefits of owning your own daycare business.

Continued in Day Care Business for Work At Home Moms Part 4.

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Day Care Business for Work At Home Moms Part 2

[continued from Part 1]

There are a few important distinctions between working for someone else taking care of children, and running your own in-home facility.

The first is money. At home childcare businesses can be profitable, but it normally takes six to eighteen months for Wahms to see any substantial income coming in. This may not be a problem for you, and if you are committed to building the quality and size of your business, the start of your profitability can be on the low end of that scale.

Also, if you are getting to look after your own children, you may decide that even if you are  not that profitable, you are saving money on your own child care by being at home full time, plus saving on things like commuting to work, gas, work clothes and lunches, and so on.

It can take several months to a year to turn a daycare into a profitable daycare business for many reasons. First of all, each state has its own licensed childcare requirements. Getting licensed to have a home daycare means attending classes, passing certification and having your home inspected.

While you are going through this process, you can look into doing some unlicensed childcare for a few children to start building your business. Babysitting for a couple of hours each day can help bring extra income in, and give you a feel for the scale of the project you are setting yourself by looking after more than just your own child or children at home.

Each state has its own rules for unlicensed childcare. You should take the steps, however, to get licensed because it will increase your employability, in the eyes of parents and make it easier to get funding for your daycare facility.

It can also take a while to become a profitable daycare facility because of the start up costs involved. While you do have some baby and child items from your own children, there are many things that you’ll need to buy in order to make your home functional as a safe and stimulating daycare facility.

You’ll want to buy tables and chairs, art supplies, music CDs, games and other activities that the children can use while they are in your home. You will also need to cater to children of various ages up to pre-school. You can write off most of these on your taxes, but you need to keep receipts and excellent records.

Day Care Business for Work At Home Moms Part 3 deals with other important differences between working for other people, and setting up your own daycare busines.

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Day Care Business for Work At Home Moms Part 1

 

Many potential work at home moms (WAHMs) think that starting an in-home daycare business might be an easy way to make extra money and stay at home with their children at the same time.

Owning a childcare business can be rewarding and does have many perks. However, the realities of this type of business are far from the expectations of most people considering childcare.

It is not the easiest way in the world to make money, and does not give you the freedom, and relative freedom from responsibility, of other work at home opportunities.

If you have experience in child care or a degree related to the child care field, then opening your own daycare as a work at home mom is a natural extension of your out of the home job, in which case, it would not be such a huge leap to take on daycare in your own home as a business.

However, there are a few important distinctions between working for someone else taking care of children, and running your own in-home facility.   We will deal with these distinctions in Part 2.

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Making the Decision to Work at Home Part 2

[Continued from Part 1]

 

The qualities of a successful WAHM

 

There are also several qualities that make a Wahm successful. Before you start working at home, evaluate whether you have these qualities, or can develop them with time and effort.

Working at home normally fits into two different categories. You can either work as an independent contractor for a company, or you can work for yourself. Either way, you are going to be in charge of your own schedule.

Therefore, you will need to be extremely organized, self-motivated, and will have to work well without having a supervisory presence in your working life.

Even those who choose to work for a company are responsible for scheduling their own time and meeting deadlines without a lot of input from supervisors.

Another important skill to have as a Wahm is time management. When you work out of the home, you’re going to be confronted with two sets of challenges each day. You’ll be faced with the work you need to get done, but you’ll also be in the midst of your household, where there are always going to be things that need to be done.

If you focus too much on your work, your household chores will get out of control, and vice versa. Having good time management skills and being able to set clear priorities will help you tackle the diverse challenges of being a Wahm.

Making the decision to become a Wahm requires a lot of thought and consideration. If you are thinking about working from home because you are having a baby, or because you are tired of sending your children to daycare, take some time to write down the pros and cons of becoming a Wahm.

Above all, talk things over with your family to ensure that you are making the right decision for the family unit. You will be doing two full-time jobs from the same space, your own home, and will need support from your partner, friends, and family. Just because your time might be more flexible, it does not mean it is ‘free’.

There are plenty of resources online for moms who are looking to find out more about the realities of working at home.

Once you’ve considered your position and done the necessary research, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for you and your family.

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Making the Decision to Work at Home Part 1

 

Mothers who work at home (or Wahms) are a growing population of working America. Increasingly, more and more women want to spend time with their children and need to bring in an income, thus there has been a boom in the work at home industry.

Making the decision to work at home is not always an easy one. Before you decide that being a Work at home mom (Wahm) is right for you, you need to take a few things into account.

First of all, you’ll need to decide if being a Wahm is right for you AND your family. There are many benefits to working at home as compared with outside the home. You can set your own hours, you don’t have to commute to work, and you can be there for your kids when they need you.

However, there are some downsides as well. The isolation of working at home can be an issue for some women. There are also challenges related to juggling work time and family time, and clearly drawing the line between both.

You willl also have to look at the impact that working from home will have on your family’s financial situation. If you are moving from a high-paying full-time job, to working part-time from home while you care for your child or children, there will definitely be some financial adjustments that will have to be made.

However, whatever your cut in pay will be, you have to weigh that versus the costs going to work commuting and so forth, for example, and above all, of putting your child into daycare full-time, which can certainly be price-y these days.

Although it may seem like your work at home pay will be much smaller compared to your full-time outside of the home job, you need to consider that your housekeeping chores are of value, and keep in mind the high cost of daycare.

If you can make an equal amount of money or more by working part-time from home and taking care of your child yourself, it is well worth it financially to stay at home.

If you also see that you will save money on your commute, lunches, work clothes, and so forth, then being a WAHM would seem to be right for you.

In fact, many women see that raising their child without the use of daycare, whether or not they make a significant income, is the real benefit of being a Wahm. The perks of raising your own child, while still bringing in money for the family, are many. Children are only young once, and being able to stay at home with them is one of the top reasons that women choose a Wahm career.

 

Continued in Making the Decision to Work at Home Part 2

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