Employment for single parents can be a prickly concern. Generations ago, it was taboo for a mother to remain employed even when there wasn’t another parent providing. It was seen as neglectful towards children – even if that nine to five meant food on their childrens’ plates and new clothes on their backs.
Related:10 Tips For Balancing Career And Family
While society is fairer to working mothers these days, individuals without children don’t have to worry about the time constraints that accompany looking after kids, nor do they have to weigh the financial burden associated with childrearing. As such, it’s important for single parents to find a career that both furnishes a decent wage and offers hours flexible enough to accommodate kids. But what sort of careers are those? Luckily, there are several varieties of stable employment that single parents can find an ideal home-work balance within.
Of course, to a great degree all of these careers hinge on the personality and temperament of the worker. For the relentlessly organized, the path of the virtual assistant will likely be a fit, and if you’ve got creative skills or talents you can develop those into something marketable in a freelance career. Those with the gift of gab and a talent for discourse should check out sales and marketing.
Virtual Assistants
The virtual assistant (VA) is great for single parents with a skill for organization. The VA is fundamentally no different from the traditional variety. They are hired by an executive to schedule appointments, make calls, organize a schedule, book travel arrangements and so on. However, the VA telecommutes and does all of this from the comfort of their home office.
Any legitimate work that can done from home is good work when it comes to juggling the responsibilities of home life. Jobs such as this are skyrocketing in availability as conferencing programs such as Skype make the daily commute somewhat arbitrary for certain occupations. If you have the experience and find an opportunity, it can be a convenient occupation to make
around $40,000 a year to support your family from the comfort of home.
Sales And Reselling
Sales can often be done from home and depending on the pay structure the salesperson can often work as much or little as they need or want to. Work in sales relies quite a bit on the company one works for. The payment structure differs, the requirement for travel varies, and obviously the product being sold changes the requirements for sales, etc.
Many companies thrive on roots-level salespeople and offer packages to facilitate your startup, but this can be expensive and fruitless if you aren’t committed to making it work. To avoid this risk, consider reselling. Reselling takes two chief forms − the more freeform class involves buying or making items and selling them for a profit on a dedicated site or a resale site like eBay or Etsy. There is also “drop shipping," where an individual buys a product or products at bulk from a supplier and resells them for a profit. This can be lucrative enough to avoid having to take a more official job, though requires intuition and study in order to sell at ideal market prices.
Freelancing And Additional Suggestions
Graphic design and desktop publishing/writing/editing represent another excellent work-at-home opportunity for those with a creative flair. For those with a penchant and skill for design, painting, drawing, or art in general, freelance graphic design (or as a telecommuting member of a firm) can prove a lucrative outlet for that artistic impulse. If someone’s talents incline more toward the literary, channel that skill for editing, writing, publishing, providing articles for a blog or a number of blogs, and so on.
Some of these are common sense, but regardless of someone’s profession, appropriate money management is always going to be an extremely important facet of their financial life. A budget should be established by studying one’s finances month to month, plotted out according to average expenditures, and then followed closely. As important to that financial security is planning for leaner times, especially when working in temporary or seasonal positions.
If a
layoff seems likely or possible, and it often is in our shaky recovering economy, the best time to search for a job is when you have one. At the same time, become familiar with the process for filing unemployment benefits and consider a backup like
supplemental unemployment insurance. With some research, originality, elbow grease and preparation, there’s a great job and a great financial life waiting out there for those willing to discover it.
Related Posts
How To Develop A Good Work/Life Balance4 Tips For Maintaining A Healthy Work-Life BalanceBalancing Your Work Life: What’s Your Ratio?
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
