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Yahoo recently posted an interesting list: The happiest jobs in America. According to Yahoo, the top 10 jobs belonging to the happiest people are:

10. Airline pilots/navigators
9. Industrial engineers
8. Mechanical and repair
7. Science technicians
6. Actors and directors
5. Special education teachers
4. Architects
3. Travel agents
2. Firefighters

And the #1 happiest occupation is CLERGY.

As you might guess, for most of these jobs, compensation isn't the main factor in determining contentment. And I thought of that in terms of my freelance writing. I could make a lot more money with my home business, but then I wouldn't have as much time with my son. And that sort of defeats the purpose of working from home.

Do you like your job?

Videos featuring Hitler in modern technology situations, from Twitter to to XBox Live, have been on the Internet. And now there is one addressing the real estate bubble and housing market crisis.

Happy Friday!

Many people in home business like to gift holiday gifts to clients. It can get expensive, but there are ways, in these times of economic and financial uncertainty, to create thoughtful, simple gifts on your own. Get Rich Slowly offered 34 ideas for do it yourself holiday gifts, and here are the few that I think are especially appropriate for a home business:

1. Homemade truffles.
2. Made from scratch cookie kits (I did this last year for neighbors).
3. Gift basket.
4. Homemade hand warmer, scarf and/or hat.
5. Personalized calendars.
6. Stationary sets.
7. Teacup candles.
8. Handmade cards.

Do you have any ideas for holiday gifts from your home business?

Yesterday, we had a look at some of the psychological advantages of having a separate home business workspace. But there are more than just psychological advantages. There are also very real financial advantages to keeping your home office separate from the rest of your home.

Financial advantages of a home office

When you have a separate home office, you have specific tax advantages. My home office is in its own room. Because of that, we can figure out how much each of the following can be deducted from our taxes:

* Portion of the mortgage payment.
* Portion of utilities.
* Depreciation for computer.
* Depreciation on the printer/fax
* Monthly Internet usage

It is important to note, however, that in order for you to take advantage of a separate home office space, you need to keep things strictly business. For example, half of my home office is taken up by storage. So I actually measure the 5 x 7 area that counts as my actually home office space (rather than the entire 10 x 14 room) and take that square footage as a percentage of the home.

Also, we bought my computer specifically for use in the home office. My husband doesn't use it for anything. He has his own laptop for his needs. Our Internet usage is determined by the fact that 85% of the time the Internet is used at home, it is for my business.

You can see how keeping business separate from home life, you can reap certain financial rewards.

You've probably heard plenty of times how important it is to have a separate home business workspace. And it is important. Indeed, Amy Fontinelle at Investopedia points out that there are two main category advantages to having a separate home business workspace:

1. Psychological
2. Financial

Psychological advantages of a home office

The psychological advantages of a home office that is clearly designated as such draws a clear line between your work life and your family/home life. Sometimes you have to know when to quit. When you have a home office, it is easier to leave that work behind. Sometimes I even shut the home office door so that I am not tempted to head back in and do more work.

Another psychological line is one that works on other people. My husband started taking my work from home job much more seriously once I had an office with my own computer. When we could point to a room, and I could outfit it as a home office, the whole thing seemed much more "real" to him. It also helps me with neighbors and relatives to have a place I can call my office.

Tomorrow we will look at the financial advantages of having a separate home business workspace.

On days like today, I am rather forcefully reminded that there are no sick days when you work from home. There are still deadlines to be met (especially at the end of the month) and decisions to be made. I love to work from home, but it would be nice to be able to take a sick day.

And, of course, every SAHM, WAHM and WOHM (and most dads, too) knows that there are no sick days for you when you have kids. So there's been homework to help with along with the fact that I've been fuzzy and distracted all day.

I'll get it all done. But it may take a while.

One of the most difficult things for those of us working from home is knowing when to quit. Most of us do not have traditional working hours. We just sort of do things when we can. And sometimes we get caught up and forget to stop working.

This is one of the curses of working from home: You can get just one more article done or put together just one more cute handbag to ship out from an order at your eBay store. In fact, there's always something to be done, and the fact that your work is also at your home means that it can be tempting to just do it.

But, like a more traditional job, sometimes it is important to just step back and assign yourself a "quitting time." Just because you work at home doesn't mean that you always have to be working.

Last Thursday, I mentioned some of the benefits of exercising in your home office. Today I'd like to offer some tips for exercising while in your home office.

1. Take a break. Take a 10 minute break every couple of hours to do something active: walk up and down the stairs in your house, get up and do some jumping jacks, go through the sun salutation (yoga), play on the Wii with your kids. Find some activity that you can do. This will not only help you boost your metabolism, but it will also get your blood flowing and help out with the problems that can come with prolonged sitting.

2. Start your day with exercise. Get up 15 - 20 minutes earlier and start your day with exercise. This will get you going in the morning. Sometimes I just do five minutes (I like the sun salutation) before I get started with work. It usually helps me be more productive right off.

3. Exercise in the evening. This is actually what I do. If you do this, it should be done at least three hours before you go to bed. I exercise for half an hour right after my son goes to bed. My husband is either doing schoolwork, watching a game on TV or playing video games. So he does that for half an hour and I exercise. Sometimes, I ride the stationary bike while we both watch TV.

4. Incorporate exercise into your routine. Sometimes I put ankle weights on and do little leglifts under my desk. Another thing I do every now and then is take the bus to a cafe with Internet. I walk to and from the bus stop, and I do my work in a different place. Another thing I do is swim twice a week at the university. Afterward, I just set up with the wifi access.

Do you have exercise tips for the home office?

Today and Monday we are going to look at exercising in your home office. Today I offer a brief of the importance of exercise when you work from home.

Benefits of exercising when you work from home

I love being a work from home mom. However, it's a busy life when you have to take care of kids and make sure you get all your work done. And you need time for your partner, if you have one. This can mean that sometimes exercise falls to the wayside. However, if you want to be healthier, it is important take a few minutes each day to do some exercise -- even though you work from home.

Here are some of the benefits you can get from exercising:

* Improve alertness.
* Sleep better.
* Have more energy.
* Increase productivity.
* Deal with sickness better.

Can you think of any other benefits of regular exercise?

Make sure you check in Monday for some helpful tips on exercising in your home office.

One of the downsides of working from home is that there can be a sense of isolation. However, there is a trend toward socializing. It's called co-working. You can get together with other telecommuters and home workers and have a good opportunity to beat back feelings of isolation by banding together with others.

I am TIRED. Mainly because I went to bed sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 last night and then got up at 4:30 this morning. One of the great things about working from home is that you can set your own hours. One of the bummer things about it is that if stuff has to be done, it has to be done.

Even if you have to get up at 4:30 a.m.

And I did. It's fast approaching the end of the month, and I have plenty to do. Which means that I need to do it sometime. But with a family to juggle and company staying in the house, I have a much more limited schedule than normal.

So it's up early.

One of the things that you have to be careful of is work from home scams. I can't tell you how many times I've clicked on a listing for a "work at home opportunity" or a "home job", only to find that the listing is really nothing more than a scam.

Here are some things to keep in mind if you want to try to avoid becoming a victim of a work from home scam:

* If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
* Do not pay money for the opportunity to work. Paying money for training or a start-up fee -- or if you are required to buy all sorts of materials -- could be a red flag.
* Be wary of opportunities that require your bank account number or your credit card number.

WAHM.com offers a great list of resources that can help you check the company for fraud.

Telecommuting is becoming increasingly popular -- and not just for people who own their own home business. Around the world, more companies are allowing their workers to stay at home for a portion -- sometimes all -- of the work week. Indeed, nearly half of employers (4 out of 10) in the U.S. offer the option to telecommute, according to a World at Work survey.

And this work from home trend is only expected to intensify, I think, with all the economic troubles. Just paying for the gas needed to get to work is taking a toll on many household budgets. Management Issues reports on the savings from gasoline alone:

Similarly, a survey by the public-private teleworking partnership Telework Exchange in June argued that allowing employees to work from home just two days a week could save the U.S economy more than $38bn a year in reduced gas bills.

On top of this, employees are more likely to be happy when working at home, since it allows more time with the family (rather than commuting) and can help with the work-life balance.

Do you telecommute? Would you like to telecommute?

I think it is fitting to remember certain dates, and observe them. 9/11 is one of those for me. I think it important to honor the losses and sacrifices of others. I hope that if I am ever called upon to personally face such a thing that I can rise as magnificently to the occasion as thousands have done before me.

So this morning I have reserved some to reflect and consider.

Do you observe 9/11?

If you're like me, sometimes it is difficult to say "no." Whether to a project, a family member or a neighbor, it can be hard to turn someone down. (It's especially hard when it's a freelance project and means a few extra bucks.)

However, if you get too stressed and too scheduled, things start to fall apart. Is that extra money worth the time I won't be spending with my son and husband? Is saying yes to some neighborhood party worth the extra stress I would feel by having to re-arrange the rest of my schedule?

Sometimes, in the name of sanity, you just have to learn to say no. It doesn't have to be in a mean or rude way, but you can say something like, "I'm sorry. I just don't have time for that right now."

Do you ever have a hard time saying "no"?

Many people wonder what sorts of jobs they can get if they want to work from home. One of the more interesting jobs is tutoring. With school starting again, many parents (and students themselves) are concerned about how to better in school. If you have particular skill in a subject, you can make money by tutoring.

While you can tutor from your home, and tutor clients in person, it is also possible to become involved in online tutoring. This is a bit of a long-distance thing, but it is possible. And there are plenty of online tutoring Web sites that can help you match with clients that could use your expertise in a specific area.

One of the difficulties of working from home is that so often the schedule changes. This is true when school is out for the summer, and your kids are home more. It becomes true when they go back to school. And because my husband is still at university, our schedule changes every semester.

So, sometimes it is a little difficult to get everything done that I would like to. And there are days when maintaining anything that resembles a set schedule is an impossibility. But I suppose that's what makes working from home so appealing. It's a little more flexible than working outside the home.

Do you ever have scheduling issues? What are they? And how do you resolve them?

Happy Labor Day!

Even though today is Labor Day, I still have work to do. A freelance writer still had deadlines to meet. However, I am lucky enough to be able to operate under a reduced workload on Labor Day.

Is your home business open on Labor Day?

I read a very interesting post over at WAHM 2.0 on Sparkplugging. It's about whether or not you have time to work from home. The insights come from a single mother with a young teen. She points out that the time she has to run a home business is different from many WAHMs:

The moms who marveled at my accomplishments had very different family situations.  Most were married - and face it - men take time!  Also, most of them had more than one child - or their children were far younger than my young teen, requiring more effort and time overall.

I had to laugh at the "men take time!" line. Don't I know it. If you want to maintain your marriage, you need to devote time to your husband as well as your children. So time becomes a very real consideration when deciding whether the WAHM route is right for you.

Honestly answer these questions as you think about whether or not to begin a home business:

* Right now, before becoming a WAHM, do you have time to do what you need to?

* If you quit an outside job, can your family finances survive while you establish a home business?

* Would having a home business cut into valuable "me" time?

* If you have a husband, would he be supportive of you as a WAHM?

* Are your children to a point where they can take care of themselves to a certain extent? Or do you have the means to hire a little extra help if needed?

Can you think of some other considerations that may affect whether now is the time to become a WAHM?

I'm getting excited for The Office to come back next month. So expect a lot more in terms of videos relating to The Office.

Happy Friday!

For the longest time, my husband and I had the same life insurance coverage. We figured that my home business of freelance writing wasn't making that much more than what he was making. But then, last year, two things happened that made us change our tune:

1. We bought a house.
2. We figured our taxes and realized how much my home business does bring in.

Armed with this knowledge, we decided that my insurance coverage needed to be upped to pay off the house and to provide for the raising of our son should the unthinkable happen.

So we bought a term life policy that covers me. This is in addition to the smaller universal life policy that we already had on me (we kept my husband's coverage the same).

Life insurance is one of those necessary things. If you have a home business, make sure that you go back and get the coverage you need. Your home business may be contributing more to your household than you realize.

I recommend this article on the 8 common life insurance mistakes to help guide your decision.

As a WAHM, I am well aware that sometimes children can be tricky when combined with the whole working from home thing. However, there are 4 things I've found that can make the whole experience much better. Here are my top 4 tips for working at home with children:

1. Have an office. Whether you just partition off the back part of the family room, or whether you have your own room, it is important to have an office. This gets the idea across that you are working when you are in your office, and it creates a space for you that is your home office, rather than a mere part of your home.

2. Figure out a steady work schedule. I have a general work schedule. I work in the mornings. This schedule is pretty regular. This schedule not only keeps me sane, but it also helps my son -- he knows exactly when I'll be working, and when he might need to amuse himself.

3. Take a break to play with your kids. I've found that if I take 20 to 30 minutes to play with my son, he's much happier for the next hour and a half to two hours. Before he gets to the pestering stage, I suggest that we play a game together or go for a walk together. That way he feels loved and attended to, and I have more peace to work with.

4. Train them in phone etiquette. I schedule my calls and interviews. If I need to interview someone, I explain to my son that I will be on the phone, and that he needs to wait until I am off. We shut the office door (which is usually open), and he plays by himself. If he has been very good while I am on the phone, I make sure to praise him.

Do you have any tips for working at home with children?

Sometimes (not during the summer, when my son is with me), I feel lonely here in my home office. When I worked in a more traditional office, I was never lonely. I had co-workers and clients to speak with.

Now, though, sometimes, when my husband is at school/work and my son is at school, I feel occasional pangs of loneliness. Sometimes I feel loneliness when my husband and son are at home -- loneliness for a little female interaction.

One of the main advantages of working outside the home is that you have people to interact with on a regular basis -- people who know where you are coming from because you have similar experiences with the same job. Even if joined neighborhood women for a gab session while the kids play, I find it hard to relate to them. I'm the only WAHM in the bunch.

So, I like to look online. I look for other WAHMs, and "chat" with them. And, every now and again, I take a  "lunch break"  and meet my aunt for some quality, face-to-face girl time.

What do you do when the home office gets lonely?

Image credit: Vmenkov

Yesterday I got a rather unpleasant surprise. Here in Logan, public school offers kindergarten for only 2 1/2 hours a day. This got me thinking about how much I had been counting on the public school system to help me out with creating work time for my home business. After all, the private preschool my son had been attending was 3 hours long. I expected public kindergarten (when I went to K, it was 4 hours) to be at least that.

Not so.

Now I am considering private kindergarten, pulling my son out of public kindergarten, so that I can get my work from home stuff done. This summer has been murder on my work schedule.

Do you think I want too much from public education?

Over at My Organized Biz, Becky is offering a contest in connection with a 7-column BBB fridge grid pad. The idea is that you can plan out the week on this magnetic pad and stick it to your refrigerator.

I love this idea. It offers an at-a-glance look at which days are going to be busiest for the family. That would help me plan my work at home schedule (not to mention our meals) more effectively.

Head on over and take a look at the planning grid, and then leave a comment. That's all you have to do to enter the drawing.

One of the items that gets talked about a lot for women with careers in the "real" world is the work life balance. For us work from home moms (WAHMs), however, it isn't always addressed. It's just assumed that if we work from home, we must automatically have a work life balance.

Tell that to my husband when I disappear into the home office for days if I have a big project.

In my opinion, it can be harder to find a work life balance when you work from home. At least when you're "out there" in the workforce, you can most likely leave your work at work. When you work from home, sometimes you are snatching at odd hours, trying to fill in the pieces. And the work is always there, always accessible, beckoning you to just finish the project.

So I've tried to make a conscious effort to take a work time out when I feel like there's too much work going on. Maintaining that balance is an important part of healthy relationships -- and a healthy life.

What do you do in order to maintain a work life balance?