Spending Business Money Wisely

When running your own home business, you may find yourself wishing you had about six more hours in a day. Then you would have enough time to devote to the household chores, the family, and your own business.

Once your business becomes profitable, you will likely notice the time crunch even more. You realize that you could earn more money if you could simply spend more time working on it. It is then you must look at the value of your time in term of dollars and cents.

This does not include family time, or time spent with your children - that time is priceless. But look at all the time spent doing the mundane, and the chores you really do not enjoy doing that seem to take up the most time.

For instance, do you spend four hours one day a week doing a thorough house cleaning (bathrooms, floors, etc)? But could you earn an additional $200 if you could devote those four hours a week to your business instead? Consider hiring a housekeeper once a week at $10 an hour, for two hours. (A housekeeper can generally accomplish the same amount of work in half the time). But even if you did hire her for four hours, you are still ahead by $160 for the week by hiring her.

The same goes for yard work and gardening - you could hire someone (or even your kids, if they are willing) to do those tasks for you.

Or if you really hate cooking, but always want healthy meals for your family, consider hiring a personal chef who comes in once every two or three weeks to cook a freezer full of meals to last those two or three weeks until the personal chef comes again.

But what if your business is just starting out and not yet showing a profit? You will then have to weigh the pros and cons of spending the money to hire someone to do these chores that seem to eat away at your time the most.

You will have to decide if spending that $40 (or $20) per week is worth having that extra four hours back. You will then have to determine the value of that four hours in terms of your business. You could consider using that time exclusively to promote your business, or exclusively to write content for your website to keep it current.

Alternatively, you could hire someone to do these on an as-is or temporary basis, such as when you have signed three new recruits in three days, or when you have received a larger-than-average order you need to fulfil. Or consider a housecleaner that comes only twice a month instead of weekly.

Only you will know if this added expense is worth it in the long run. Or perhaps you can look at your budget and figure ways to save the extra money you would need to hire someone. But if you are earning enough money to more than cover the expense by the time you gain, it probably is.

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