Costs Involved in Setting Up a Home Office
Many women are turning towards working from home, but contrary to the popular myth, a Home Office costs more than ‘nothing’ if you are seriously considering quitting your job and working from home full time. Here’s what you should expect and be prepared for, if you wish to work from your home office.
What You Need: The first thing to consider when setting up is that it should be a practical place to work. To ensure maximum productivity when working from home, you need to make sure that you put in all the necessary equipment such as a computer, broadband internet, fax, printer, office supplies etc.
What to Avoid: Try not to overload your home office room with other accessories that will divert your mind and reduce productivity. This would include a TV, game system or stereo. Your goal here is to work and you only need work-related stuff in here.
That said, let’s see how much it actually costs to set up a fully functional home office. The prices are only estimates, but will give you a fair idea of the total costs involved.
1. Office furniture is very affordable these days. You can find office furniture for about $150 for a huge desk or for about $300 for an entire home office center with a computer desk.
2. A comfortable chair is also important and make sure that it can be adjusted so you can be comfortable when you type on the computer or look into the monitor for extended periods of time. This would cost about $200 and would be an investment well worth it.
3. A computer – desktop or laptop, whichever you prefer, along with software and accessories will cost about $1500.
4. An all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier for $600.
5. For a business website, you will need a domain name, web hosting, website design and management. For one year with a decent web host will cost you $100 and the domain $10. Designing a website is easy using blogging software like WordPress. Considering you will manage your website initially, no costs will be added. However, for an initial business promotion strategy (whether online or offline), a budget of $500 is a bare minimum to get you going.
6. To connect, you will need a Smart phone and an internet connection costing about $2500.
7. For day to day administration you will need consumable office supplies like printer paper, stationery, files, calculator, shredder, pencils, pens, envelopes, stamps etc. An estimated initial cost of $500, although this will be recurring.
8. Adequate and comfortable lighting and fans depending upon your local climate. Depending upon what your office room already has, set aside a budget of roughly $250 for these.
9. You will need reference books, magazines to stay updated of the trends, newspapers and periodicals etc. A monthly recurring cost of $100 is allocated to these.
10. For most online businesses, a camera is essential these days. For e.g., if you wish to sell online on your website or through auction sites, you will need to take good pictures of your products. You will also need one for some freelancing jobs and if you plan to earn through blogging. A decent camera can be found for less than $200 although dpeending upon your use, you might need a more expensive camera or other accessories such as a light box and a tripod. For the purpose of this article, we will allocate $200 towards the camera.
Total Costs – $6100 approx.
Like pointed out previously, these are only estimates. The point of this article is to arm you with the information that it does not take ‘nothing’ to start working from home and to enable you to take a well-informed decision before quitting an existing job and/or planning a home business.
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