We live in a world where many dads are struggling financially to keep their families afloat. Gone are the days where families could live a decent life with only one person in the family working. Nowadays both husband and wife must work to make ends meet.
However, there are cases where it’s not even feasible for the wife to work. Take me for example. My wife worked for a while in a retail store, we were doing ok financially but sooner we realized a couple of things: One is that she was spending less time with the kids, and she was often missing out on their events, field trips, and performances at school. Not only that but we also found out that the cost of having a babysitter was almost as much as what she was making at her retail job!
Alexas_Fotos / Pixabay
When you find out it’s not worth it
After carefully thinking about it for a while, we decided that it was not even worth it. So I told her to quit. Although things got better with the kids, soon enough we started feeling the pressure of that extra income now gone. So I had to find new ways.
That’s where I first started getting interested in looking for ways to earn extra income. Because I know and like working with websites and stuff, it was natural that I put those skills to good use by doing a few odd jobs after my regular job and my spare time.
This worked ok for a while, we were able to get caught up on some bills and even pay some minor debts off. However, after about a year, it started taking a toll on me. I was getting a bit burnt out. But that wasn’t even the problem, the biggest issue though was the fact that I was now the one missing out on my kids’ lives.
I was spending too much time working and had almost nothing left to spend with my kids and wife. I started thinking, it was a hard decision to make but I had already done a similar mistake in the past of working too much and missing out on spending time with one of my sons. I feel a knot in my throat every time I remember this because I now regret it. It took a lot of precious time that I could have used to spend with my son…and now that time is gone forever 🙁 and there is no way to get it back.
Sure maybe it helped economically a bit, but it is time I cannot regain back. So I decided that I wasn’t going to do the same mistake again with my other kids.
So I went back to the drawing board.
Going back to the drawing board
NeuPaddy / Pixabay
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I decided that meeting up with clients didn’t quite work out for me, it was just taking a lot of energy and precious time away. I often had to drive elsewhere to meet with clients and it often ended up taking longer than expected.
I then started doing heavy research online. I could write up a whole book on this alone of all the things I learned there but to make the long story short this is what I concluded from all that.
There are many things a dad can do to bring in a bit more money in without spending long hours after a regular job meeting with clients and such. This involves doing work online. After countless courses and investing in learning many different things, I found out a few things.
Many strategies actually do work. But where people get stuck in is in trying to do too many things, or giving up without giving it an adequate amount of time and effort.
People just tend to give up when they try something new and doesn’t work or don’t see immediate results.
Doing work online requires dedication, time, some patience, and perhaps more importantly…action! The beautiful thing about it is that you don’t have dead-set times where you need to meet with clients and stuff. You have the flexibility to do this kind of work per your schedule.
I would recommend that you apply some self-discipline and put yourself a consistent amount of time to grow your online business. This can be one or two hours a day. I would recommend one-hour minimum. Yes, You can still do something with only one hour a day!
I’ll be giving you some ideas on some of the things you can do. I might even throw a few things that you don’t necessarily need to do online. Look for my next post soon.
In the meantime, sign up to my free email newsletter I have on my new Dad Solopreneur website I started a couple months ago. Through this email newsletter, I’ll be sharing the latest things I have learned so far about making additional income online. I want to help other dads struggling with this out there.
