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Banking and Finance  » Surviving the Financial Strain

Surviving the Financial Strain

When you start a home business, it's all too easy to get carried

away by all your new obligations: keeping your customers happy,

earning enough money to live, and so on. Being in such an

uncertain financial situation is stressful, but many home

business owners simply ignore this stress, instead of dealing

with it. When you're worrying about money, you tend to be

worrying about everyone else and what will happen when you let

them down. What I'm saying is this: don't forget yourself. Take

time out and relax and don't forget your family.

The End of Stability... or the Beginning?

Many people get very upset a few months after they quit their

job and start their own business, feeling like they threw away

the financial stability they had in their job, to chase a dream.

Think of this way, though: just how stable were you in your job

to begin with? Did you constantly have to avoid saying or doing

the wrong thing, for fear of getting fired? Did it always feel

like you were one bad project away from the end?

Well, you are in almost all 'real' jobs, when hiring and firing

is at the whim of your manager. At least now you work for

yourself you can't lose your whole job -- only individual

clients. I know many people, especially medical professionals,

who feel far more stable working at home than they ever did in

their job. They know that there will always be at least enough

people coming to them for them to survive.

Living With It

You knew this was going to be hard on you financially when you

started -- it's no excuse to give up. Talk to any home business

owner and they'll tell you how much stress they're under. It's

part of the way of life. Big companies are designed to take

financial strain away from individual employees, since

everything is decided by committee and it's the investors who

are going to be losing out anyway. You don't have this luxury.

The only advice to give here is that you shouldn't take any more

financial risk than you're comfortable with -- decide in advance

just how much you're willing to lose before you throw in the

towel. You should agree this point with your family before you

start, though, and don't let them pressure you into giving in

before you've reached it.

Keep Clear Records

The absolute worst and most stressful thing is not to know

exactly what your financial situation is from day to day. While

you might think you don't want to know, things are never really

as bad as they seem when you've got the numbers in front of you.

It's when you leave it to your imagination that things really

start to seem bad.

The simplest way to keep records for yourself is to use a simple

accounting program, or even just a spreadsheet. Enter what you

started with, and then record everything you spend and

everything you earn. Remember: it's never that bad.

Don't Start Taking Sick Days

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It can be all too easy to take 'sick days' when the only person

you answer to is yourself -- when you feel stressed, the natural

reaction is to hide away and ignore whatever it is that's making

you stressed. You'll only make your financial situation worse if

you do this, so it's important that you only stop working when

there's something actually wrong with you, not just when you

feel low.

What's the Worst That Can Happen?

Think of it this way: what's the absolute worst case scenario,

the thing that you're most afraid of financially? There are very

few situations that couldn't be solved by selling a few of the

things that have accumulated in your house over the years (you

probably don't even use them), or by selling your car and

getting a smaller one. Do you really need all those things you

subscribe to monthly? Newspapers, cable TV, and the rest could

all go in an emergency, right?

Basically, when you run a home business, you might have to make

a few short-term sacrifices to get yourself out of trouble. I

guarantee you, though, that you will find it very difficult

indeed to completely crash and burn.

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