self employment can drain the family

[Home77]

It is supposed to be liberating and a job is like someone else having your life apparently - but self employment seems to me to take over life, family life...seems to be very time consuming for little money.

My dh is self employed and there are definitely pros and cons
The main con is that when we do go on holiday , dh always has a phone to his ear and takes his laptop everywhere. He is unable to switch off.
However, the pros far outweigh the cons. He is less stressed because he doesn’t have to do a two hour commute. Also, when he works long hours, he knows that it will benefit the family. When he was working for a company, he would do many hours of unpaid work which was not appreciated.

I think getting the balance is really hard. And it can be very stressful and uncertain for a long time. We are nearly five years in and are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel in terms of cash flow. It's still a bit scary, but has been looking up. But the Flexibility is fantastic. It helps that Dh is with the kids and more than willing to step up when I need to work longer hours, but at the same time, I've always built in time that is sacrosanct for family and for him to have time off. That's been the key to making it work - he'll accept I have to work on a weekend because he knows that I consistently am home by a set time on the days he does his hobby and I take Friday afternoons off to be with the kids. Always.

OP, sorry but 9 years later and I still feel like its a drain. We now have staff but the impact on our family life has now been replaced with the stress of managing staff. To be honest, I wish we hadn't started taking people on.
I would elaborate but quite frankly expressing my honest views may come across as shocking.
The situation is now that whilst the business is doing great after 9 years and still has loads of potential it has took such a toll on my husbands health and mine that we are happy to walk away from it in a few months once we negotiate with the landlord who thankfully for us can see the detrimental effect its having on us as he went through the same and he doesnt want us to get any worse.
I have recently met someone who started in the same business as us with wonderful ideas as to how it was going to work guess what? He realised it wasnt like that and quit after three months!
It is relentless and the stress never really goes away. All the best OP.

It also depends on whether you're the main breadwinner or just looking for something to earn a bit of "pin money"!

If the former, you're under a lot of pressure to bring in enough every single month to pay the mortgage, bills, food, car etc. That can be really stressful when you're trying to get established and when you're desperate you end up taking on work you know you shouldn't, but you have to do it just to bring some cash in. Then you end up a "busy fool" doing work that's non profitable or too time consuming, which means less time/money for marketing quality clients for the long term.

"On the side" self employment is the opposite - it's more of a hobby and there's not the same pressure to being in £x every month for the essential expenses. If your partner is bringing in the regular money, or you're retired and have paid off your mortgage, you can choose to work or not, choose enjoyable work rather than profitable work etc. Far less stress and a much better work/life balance.

As someone said above, every self employment is different. For some it's wonderful, for others it's actually worse than being a wage slave.

Lots of interesting and relevant stuff to read here, thanks. I needed to get some perspective. One of the issues we have is he has a two hour commute, involved at the moment with the client he is doing something for, which is causing a problem. So yes even though self employed the commute can still be a problem. However we are able to go away together at half term as a family. I guess there are swings and roundabouts. At least, this (commute) is not for ever...there is also the issue or premises. This is new and causing stress, as an extra expense. However it means less profit / tax I guess. And if you are doing something you love I think that must help a lot.

We will have paid off the mortgage in 18 months but he says things won't change much as it was a small mortgage. But I think it is much easier situation that some people we know who have big mortgages. He just doesn't realise that.

YANBU- I know two families where one works self employed. They are just working all the time, long hours afraid to turn down work

To be honest, I wish we hadn't started taking people on.

I built up a small business and had four staff. Worst thing I ever did. I ended up working harder and longer and made less money as I was forever monitoring and training them, and reviewing/correcting their work, and couldn't get my own work done.

I took the hard decision to downsize and let them go. It was very hard because in the early days I'd made a decision to grow the business, rent premises large enough to have staff, buy their equipment and invest in their training. But, with me being the "boss", I just couldn't spread myself thinly enough to look after them as well as my own work. With hindsight, perhaps I should have employed an office manager so that they could do the supervising, training and review, but their wage would have been more than I was earning!!

Once I'd let them go and got rid of a load of clients, it was very liberating just to be on my own again. What was even better was that my income went back up as I no longer had wages to pay and had more time to do my own work again.

Over the years since then, I've concentrated on only taking on quality clients and getting rid of the low quality ones who were "high maintenance" and sapped my time and energy. 20 years after starting it, I'm now in a "happy place" where I have a relatively small number of quality clients and can take time off almost when I feel like it, no longer need to work every weekend, no longer need to work on holiday etc. It takes a very long time to build a "lifestyle" business - at first you feel you have to take on all clients to grow it, and it takes time to work out which clients are worthwhile and which need to be ditched.

Ok, that is interesting as mine has started talking about employing someone. I thought 'no'- just a gut feeling it would cause stress.

Kazzyhoward - Thank you, I thought it was me being mean!! I'm glad there our others out there who have experienced this.

I have got to say mind that despite how I feel I have learnt an awful lot, developed some fantastic skills and feel very proud to have ran a successful business for 9 yrs. Especially since it could keep thriving, BUT I cant wait to get out of it all we need to for our health and happiness.
When it does happen and I return to employment I will certainly appreciate my peers more, have much more respect for management and the decisions they make, I will never moan about bureaucracy and I will treasure and feel grateful for my statutory rights again.

I will miss the ability to work flexibly but that is the only benefit there really is at the moment the list of cons is sadly greater.

I do thing there is one type of self employed I am self employed employed 14 staff and turned over a million last year. There are times when it is stressful, but I have a good I come. More control over my life than my DP who earns a similar amount to me in an employed role and is responsible for a team of 24 employees.
We both have similar stress levels, similar drains on our time, but DP has to go where his bosses say when they say. I get to make the decisions.
DP will be going self employed in 2.5 years time.

I think it is stressful here as also have DH's parents getting older but still doing their business and it is causing them so much stress but they don't want to 'give up' It is causing their children (with families of their own) much worry. But I think they won't know what to do with themselves if they stop. Maybe it is best not being so emotionally invested? It really is part of them and an expression of they do, which in a way is lovely, but it comes coupled with stresses as well. In their case however they don't need the money (in fact it costs money) so would be easier to have a hobby in a way.

Self employment for my DH works well for our family. The first year was lean but we were living with family to save money. Since then he has earned at least as much and up to double his previous salary. He has flexibility to look after our daughter 2 days a week so I can work part time. The main downsides are that it can encroach into evenings and weekends and thus into couple/ family time. I have similar issues as I work from home also so it can be a constant juggling of childcare with occasional family help when we both need to work. He also has periods of working away for 5-10 days over the summer which can be tough for me. But once she's in school it'll be easier. He lost a big contract recently but because he does a range of different types of work for different clients this isn't a disaster, he has already picked up extra work and we are seeing it as a positive that he can be around a bit more during my maternity leave. Networking is key as is the type of industry if it's going to work for you. Not putting all your eggs into one basket also works well for him. I did worry about him taking on too much work until the recent client loss and I think it is difficult to turn work down when self employed although he has started to take small steps towards weighing up whether small pieces of work that aren't that well paid relative to his other work are going to be worth it.

DP has his own business with several members of staff. I feel like Princess Diana - three people in the relationship sort of thing, me, him and the business.

I don't mind and have accepted it as the way it is. But we are childfree (by choice) and I think I'd think very hard about having children in this set up because I know I would be the one who had to do everything.