Working from home and being your own boss has bags and bags of benefits. For example: sitting in your pajamas; afternoon cocktails (because why not?); and no devilish commute. But for all these super benefits (pajamas!), there’s one obvious pitfall: money. And not just the guarantee of a set wage, but the actual tools and supplies you need to do your job. These are always supplied by the company you’re working for, but now? You’re on your own. And you’ll soon find that the costs of working from rack up, so you’ll need to save more than just that commuter money.
Go Without
It’s tempting to kit your “office” out with some cool office supplies, but it’s not always the smartest idea in the world. Before buying anything connected with your business, ask yourself if it’s a necessary purchase or a luxury one. It’ll make keeping tabs on what you’re spending all the easier, and will also help avoid any uncomfortable “why on earth did I buy that?” type questions when it comes to crunching the financial numbers later on down the line.
Goodbye To Paper, Cash for Old Items
You need to look to the future and the past with your new venture. For starters, paper is out. Nobody uses paper anymore – it wastes money, it hurts the environment, and there’s no need when everything can be digital. That’s that taken care of. Looking to the past, take a look at any old electrical items you might have. Damaged goods, even those that won’t turn on, will still be able to be sold – or if they’re recycled, you might get a tax break.
Keep Your Tech In Good Order
It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true: you can save money by spending money. Why? Because by having technology that actually works, you’ll be boosting your productivity. Staying loyal to an old machine to save money is senseless, because it’ll cost you too many manpower hours over the course of a week, let alone a year. Not that good tech has to be expensive; look at M Suite for refurbished Macs, for instance. In the long run, your technology will be key for your business.
Paying for Software? No Chance
You could easily drop a big portion of your budget on software. The big brands out there are fantastic, easy to use, and expensive. But there are other ways – use open source programs instead of one of the big boys and you’ll pay nothing at all. There’ll be a free version for just about anything that you’d like to do, and it won’t be subpar by any stretch.
Prioritize
You won’t be able to have everything in your new work set up (not yet, anyway – the big time might be just one big contract away!). Instead, you’ll need to prioritize where your money goes. The best money saving advice is to simply be on top of your spending, to treat a portion of time working to being an accountant. It’s not always the most glamorous of jobs, but this is what you signed up for when you left murky world of office life and went solo!