7 Ways You Can Save Money by Working From Home

As I began to look into our finances and my “working routine” and the income it required, I found 7 ways I could save money from working at home:

I was fortunate enough to have my husband’s mother watching my kids at the time, and though we paid her, it was definitely not as much as what most parents pay.  The average cost of “center-based daycare in the United States is $11,666 per year ($972 a month),” according to Google.  This is a HUGE chunk of change that can instead stay in your pocket if you are able to work with you children at home with you. 

Let’s be honest here.  It just does not cost as much to be sitting at home – makeup and jewelry free while in your PJ’s – as it does to dress for the working world.  Those who know me know that I still appreciate cute clothes, but those who know me WELL know that I also often spend two or three days at a time in the same outfit.  Most days I don’t leave the house, so it just isn’t necessary to get all dressed up.  Also, even with the cute things I do buy, there is a big difference between a cute top and a pair of jeans from Kohls with a 30% off coupon versus having to purchase a tailored suit from Nordstrom. 

They always say to “dress for the job you want, not the job you have.”  Really not sure how this applies to me anymore unless the job I want is to be homeless.  But moving on…  

While we are on the subject of tailored suits and fancy work clothes, these require additional care – and expense – to keep them looking nice, especially if you’re like me and have spilled food on every outfit you’ve ever worn since birth.  Again, when you’re wearing the same pair of PJs for days at a time, dry cleaning quickly becomes a thing of the past. 

I was always too cheap to be hitting Starbucks every morning before work, but I know that this is standard practice for many, and thus there is so much money to be saved by brewing your own coffee and working from home.  An area in which I did often splurge, however, was paying for lunch far too often.  It was all I could do to get myself and two children out the door each morning, so there was no way I was also packing a lunch.  This instead left me pulling out my wallet most days, and this is a habit that quickly adds up!  Say you spend about $10 a day – whether it be on lunch, coffee, hitting the vending machine, or a combination of all of these.  That is $2,600 a year that can be saved by working from home and thus eating at home for far less money. 

I realized how very little I would probably be driving if it weren’t for having to be going to work.  All parents out there know that loading up kids to go anywhere is something you avoid at all costs unless it is absolutely necessary – like going to work.  If working at home, I knew that my trips into town would be few and far between, and thus even more savings by not working!  And I was fortunate enough that I was only paying for gas.  Many working in big cities have to also pay for tolls and/or parking as part of their work routine.  Not to mention, there is wear and tear on the vehicle.  This can all be avoided when working from home. 

In researching jobs where I could work from home, I learned that there are SO MANY tax write offs that I could take advantage of.  You are able to write off the square footage in your home that may be used as a home office as well as any supplies you purchase that pertain to your business – i.e. a new computer, printer, pens, paper, etc, etc.  You can also write off a portion of your electric bill, cell phone bill, and others.  Again, it just all adds up to why you may not need to make as much money as you once did. 

Working from home will inevitably free up a certain amount of time.  For me, this began with the time it took to get ready for work each day.  I have never had the kind of hair where you can just walk out of the shower and go.  It has always required some effort to tame my curls, and thus getting ready for a day at work – if I wanted to look decent at least – always took time.  (Again, refer back to point #1 and you’ll know that I no longer make this effort each day and thus save tons of time).  

Another huge time savings – even for those who do have the shower-and-go hair – is the elimination of a daily commute to work.  Once again utilizing Google, we can see that the average commute is 26 mins each way, so 52 minutes every day!  If you were to get a job that paid you hourly from home, that is nearly a whole extra hour that you can just make money rather than being stuck in your car.  And if your job is salaried, that still gives you nearly an extra hour of your day to use doing one of the hundreds of other tasks you are bound to have. 

The bottom line:  Time is precious, and TIME IS MONEY! 

In conclusion… 

Though the initial reaction to losing the income of the family breadwinner was quite stressful, and it seemed as though I could never take a huge pay cut, the more I considered our budget and these seven expenses, the more I realized that maybe I truly could take one of these work-from-home jobs that paid less and make it work.  And that’s exactly what I did!  I have been happily working from home for these past seven years and getting to spend countless precious hours with my babies – and many others where I want to pull my hair out… but that’s a story for another day! 

In going through this list and crunching your own numbers, I truly hope you will also realize that working from home may be a viable option – especially if that is your dream like it was mine.  However, if what you’re feeling is more like “close, but no cigar,” then there are other things you can also consider in helping your financial situation.

These were the ways that I truly saved money from working from home, but another thing I kept in mind while considering taking the pay cut to work from home was that my husband has been blessed with a career that regularly gives raises and bonuses that we can truly count on each year.  So this list was enough to get me started, but I realized that even if there was a small deficit at first that would require us to dip into our savings, it would not be long before his next raise, and at that point we would be okay.

However, if after all of these factors you still don’t think you can get there, this is where you look into eating out less, cutting cable, seeking cheaper options for various insurances, etc.  Sometimes simply getting a little creative with ways to stretch your money is all you need to reach your goal of working from home.