CJ is thinking about leaving his full time job to work from home as a freelance writer. Scary. Especially in today's economy; if you have a job why in the world would you quit? His current job pays well (I don't want to disclose salary as I have no idea who may read this), offer 401K (which he hasn't participated in), offers health, eye and dental insurance, offers life insurance, paid vacation, personal time, and we get a deal on phones and a rate plan (yes, he works for a mobile phone company) and if he'd get fired, he could collect unemployment, as long as he was eligible. So WHO in their right mind would quit to work at home? He would.

I run L&C Freelancing and I love my job. I also do paid blogging and I am a freelancer on the side for content companies such as Break Studios and Demand Studios. If I work my ass off, I can make $3-$4K a month. CJ works part time as a freelancer and makes about $1,500-$2K a month -- that is PART TIME, after working his 'regular' 45 hour a week job. (No OT, he's salaried) If he had the time to freelance full time, he could easily make more than I do a month. (He is more efficient than me and is not easily distracted like I am, LOL) Freelancing full time could potentially bring in $3k more a month than we currently make. I told him it's his job to look for cheap insurance companies or look into the insurance Demand Studios offers because we'd have to be sure our family is covered.

Is this crazy? At first I thought so; I mean, how stable is freelancing? About as stable as any other job. We shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket? What if we both worked for the mobile phone company? Wouldn't we both have our eggs in the same basket then?

PROS:

• make more money
• both home = freedom to do more family things and spend time with kids
• control of our finances, the harder we work, the more we make.
• making more money now means paying off debt such as car, motorcycle, Disney vacation home
• we can both spend time together to grow L&C Freelancing
• he will leave his current job on good terms so he can always go back to that job if things fail working from home. He'd be starting at less money but at least he'd have a job -- so long as that company is around

CONS:

• fear of lack of stability
• freelance companies suddenly go under--w/o warning? (Companies sometimes do that too though)
• need to be sure money lost from quitting job is recovered and then extra made to cover health insurance

I'd love to hear from families where both people work from home or run their own business.