I’m almost a month into full-time self-employment already as I quit my job effective July 31.
It’s been a period of transition as I try to figure out a schedule for my day that allows me to balance the workload of my freelance writing business and my life away from the computer.
Even though I’m still new to being self-employed I wanted to share a few reasons why self-employment rocks!
No Commute
Although my commute prior to quitting my job was pretty short (like 5 minutes short), I am still excited that my commute now is like 5 steps. This difference does add up to some savings in my monthly budget as I no longer have to fill my car up with gas as often, it gets less miles and the wear and tear that goes with them, and my car stays in the garage so it doesn’t get beat up in bad weather. I especially think I’m going to love the whole no commute thing when winter arrives, because I HATE winter.
No Crowds at the Store
As much as I hate winter, I hate going to Walmart even more.
Now that I’m self-employed I go to Walmart while everyone else is at work, therefore I only have to deal with senior citizens (whom I can zoom by quickly in the aisles) instead of thousands of people with screaming children. Woot!
No Pants Required
Lest you think I’m typing this while naked, I just want to clarify this benefit – there are no “real” pants required when you are self-employed and all of your work is online.
This means I can wake up, walk to work, and not wear real pants all day. Then I take a shower and change into new pajamas before bed. Not wearing real pants saves me money on clothes and saves me time getting ready in the morning so I can sleep longer AND get more work done. #thisisthelife
No Co-Workers
Depending on your personality type, this could be a positive or a negative. If you are a hermit, you’d probably love not having co-workers, or people at all, to interact with all day.
Although I’m usually pretty outgoing, I do consider this to be a positive as co-workers really distract me from my work. I think I get more done in less time now that I don’t have co-workers. But then again, I do have unlimited access to social media on my home computer, so maybe the time savings this one is a wash.
No Excuse to Eat Out
Ya’ll probably know by now how much I love to eat out at restaurants. When I was working at my office job it was all too easy to go out to eat instead of going home for lunch, especially since my lunch consisted of either leftovers for a sandwich since I didn’t have time to actually cook anything for lunch during my lunch break. Now I make homemade lunches 3-4 times each week and I eat the leftovers for supper and on the “off” days. This helps me save money by not eating out, eat healthier food, and not waste leftovers. The other part of the reason this is successful is because I’m already at home so it’d also be a waste of time and gas to go out to eat for lunch. I’d call that a win/win/win.
Being self-employed obviously has positives and negatives, but I’d say that so far my experience has been overwhelmingly positive up to now. Again, I don’t have to wear “real” pants, so I’m not sure anything negative could outweigh that positive.
