Penalties for Working at Home
Nataly at Work It, Mom! shares an experience that so many of us who are ’self employed’ or who ‘work from home’ experience almost daily.
In the pile of the paperwork that the doctor’s office gave me to fill out there was a basic “tell us about yourself†questionnaire. I was on autopilot while filling it out until I got to this question:
“Do you work outside the home?“
How are we supposed to answer that question?
I’ve encountered much of the same types of discriminations when applying for any type of loan whatsoever. It seems that if you work from home or if you’re self employed, even when you make 5-6k per month, you’re going to be penalized.
Why is this?
I agree with Nataly in that working from home is the toughest job I’ve ever had, I work more than I ever have, I carry much more responsibility than ever — so why are people who are taking pride in creating their own successes being penalized?
Why does the question - “Do you work outside the home?” even need to be asked?
Surely there are some ways to work around the bias. I find it hard to digest the actuality of a persons ability to be recognized as ‘worthy’ when they are employed at or slightly above minimum wage, over a person who earns 5x that working from home.
As it stands right now, if you’re a successful and work from home, you’re encouraged to lie and commit fraud in order to secure loans for things like cars and homes.
I’m interested in how other entrepreneurs or self employed successes deal with this discrimination.
Care to share?
Tags: work at home, working from home, entrepreneur, self employed, credit
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Wow really thoughtful question. I work out of my home too but make a nice income. I wonder if that question is trying to say - do you work besides being a Mom and wife?
Yes, I’ve always assumed the question actually meant ‘do you work in return for money’ and was designed to determine whether you were ‘just a housewife’ without offending militant feminists
I, of course, would answer ‘yes’ because I travel the world from my computer everyday.
‘First I had a teleconfernece with Bombay, then I had to fix some problems in New York then I spoke to my agent in Birmingham this afternoon…’
I work from home and always find that people SO
I work from home and always find that people SO easily discount it because you don’t punch a time clock. What they don’t realize, is I probably work twice as much as them. Just because you don’t actually “go” to work certainly doesn’t mean you don’t work.
I quit my day job last week to try and make a living from blogging. I’m going to give it a go anyway but that is one of the drawbacks of working from home that I hadn’t considered.
Dealing with this is simple. If the company you are trying to work with, whether it be a bank, insurance carrier, etc., asks such a question and attempts to penalize you based on that… then take your business elsewhere, and let them know why you are doing so. This is the strongest way to send them a message that they need to change their policies.
Working from home means self employed I think.
But the question is really do you work for someone else so we can garnish your wages if we have to sue you to get paid.
If you work for someone else then banks love you. Why because they can go after your pay check if you don’t pay.
Anecdotal evidence: I have a relative- a young architect- who is married to an engineer working in the Railways. She told me that her husband had a staff of 10 people who had absolutely no work to do and were therefore unofficially designated as his domestic help. She didn’ t know how to gainfully employ these people at home either. On being coaxed by the husband, who was tired of having these people sitting around, she tried to keep them busy at home: one person to water the plants in the morning, one in…
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