Working from home can be a great way to work because you don’t have to worry about the commute, annoying colleagues and all the other problems that often arise when you have to share an office with other people. However, you need to make sure that you think about it in the right way from a financial perspective. If you’re not careful, you could end up spending more than you need to.
Saving money when you work from home certainly is possible, even if it feels like you’re always having to pay for things. That’s not to say saving money is easy because it will take time and effort to get things right. There are some changes you can start to make right away though, and that’s what we’re going to talk about and look into in more depth right now.
Read on if you want to save money and make your home working arrangement more financially successful and sustainable.
Don’t Accept Slow Payments
Allowing yourself to be taken advantage of by customers and clients will always cost you more money in the long term. You should take a zero-tolerance approach to this kind of stuff; simply don’t accept slow or late payments, and make this clear before any work is done. You will then be able to manage your money properly because you know it will be coming to you on time. And that means you won’t have to lose out on cash by borrowing it and having to pay back the interest later on.
Make Your Home More Energy Efficient
If you have an energy-efficient home to work out of, you will end up spending less on things like heating and electricity. This is an obvious thing to point out, but many people forget about it. Your bills always go up when you start working from home for the simple reason that you start spending more time there. You use more heating and electricity. So by insulating the home and taking other similar energy-efficient steps, you can make sure that none of that money goes to waste while you work.
Use Internet Calls Rather Than Regular Calls
Calls can be costly when you’re working from home. You don’t want to pay for a regular phone bill because that can get really expensive over time. Instead, you should opt for a VoIP option. This is something that many people and many businesses now use to take care of their phone needs. It’s so much cheaper than using an ordinary phone. And when you’re making calls to other people using VoIP, the calls will be completely free, which has to go to be a good thing for you.
Promote Yourself in Ways That Are Free
When you’re the face of a freelance operation, you need to take steps to promote yourself so that you can, in turn, promote what you offer. It’s something that more people should try to do because it’s essentially a free marketing technique. You might want to run a blog, do some public speaking or become a thought leader in another way. If you’re struggling to pay for things like marketing and advertising, this is a way to still do it, while also saving money at the same time.
Claim Expenses to Save on Your Taxes
When you’re filling in your taxes, you should remember that you can save a lot of money by claiming back expenses. For people who work at home, everything from their work computer to a proportion of their heating costs can be claimed back as tax-free, and that will save you a significant sum of money. If you want to really get this right, you should talk to a tax advisor. They’ll ensure that you don’t pay any more tax than you absolutely have to, so go for it.
Look for the Best Deals on Everyday Stuff Like Paper and Ink
It’s easy to ignore the many small expenses that you need to cover when you’re working from home. For example, you need to keep paying for things like paper and ink cartridges. Cartridge Shop is a good place to head to if you want to save money on stuff like this. You should never stop looking for better and cheaper deals on this stuff, even if it seems like it’s only small stuff that doesn’t cost that much. These are regular home office expenses, meaning the costs will mount up over time.
Get Around More Efficiently
If you do need to get around the city and head to meetings with clients and associates, you need to think about how you do this. If you approach it in the wrong way, you will end up wiping out the savings that you originally made by not having to commute to and from work each day.
So how can you get around in a more efficient way? That’s a good and important question, and the easiest answer is to either invest in an electric car to save fuel expenses in the long term or get a transport pass that allows you to save on public transport.
Conduct Client Meetings Via Skype
Heading out to meetings all over the city and the country can get pretty expensive. Flights, cars and trains are all costly when your employees are catching a lot of them. So you should try to conduct meetings with clients and business partners over Skype. These days, this is the best way to speak to people, and you can still maintain that all-important face-to-face interaction. As long as your clients and partners are on board with the idea as well, it’s something that you should definitely think carefully about.
Take the Opportunity to Spend Less on Food and Drink
Working from home means that you don’t have to buy lunch out and you don’t have to stop off at expensive coffee shops on your way to work. All of those things can be very tempting when you’re doing a regular office job. But they should all be ditched once you start to work from home.
You need to embrace the opportunity you have to spend less money on food and drink. Make your own lunch and drink the cheap coffee that you always drink when you’re at home. You’ll save so much cash this way.
Keep the Home Office Door Closed
This is an important way of conserving energy when you’re using a heating or cooling system in your home office. If you leave the door wide open, the heat or cold air that you’re paying to generate will escape out of the room and not be used in the most efficient way possible. So keep that office door closed when you’re trying to stay on top of your utility bills and keep them as low as they possibly can be. It might not sound like a big issue, but it really is if you want to spend less.
