A funny thing happened a couple of weeks after I bought the
Yaris...my employer announced a major layoff. Within a month, they went out of business altogether. Dang! Oh, well. I did some quick figuring and discovered that I could survive on unemployment and still keep the car. But it would be tight. I don't live an exorbitant lifestyle, so there wasn't a whole lot I could cut from my budget.
Luckily, I only wound up drawing one week of unemployment. No, I didn't get another full time job, per se, but I did manage to land a consulting contract. It is a contract to provide manufacturing support, product testing, product quality assurance, product evaluation, system evaluation, device design support, technical training, product failure analysis and other miscellaneous product support for the family of a product that I originally designed for this customer (while employed by my former employer). This should take the better part of a year while the client ramps up production at a contract manufacturer.
So, contract work is better than no work. And I'm certainly no stranger to working from home. I spent my first 4 or 5 years working from home after getting hired by my last employer. There will be some travel, of course, but the client pays for all of that. The biggest drawbacks to consulting is paying for my own health insurance and having to calculate and pay all the federal and state income taxes myself. The health insurance for myself is bad enough, but I am also covering my two kids, who are full time college students. It's about like making two more house payments each month (relax, I have a cheap house). Still, I am indeed grateful for the work.
Thinking back, it is almost as if I have been preparing to be a consultant for quite some time now. I started a home business back in 2001 after getting laid off from a corporate job. It provided no real income to speak of - at least not enough for me to make a living. But it got me to set up a home office, purchase accounting and invoicing software, and to start thinking along the lines of working for myself. Heck, I even upgraded my wireless phone earlier this year to a smartphone with Windows Mobile and Office Mobile. Did I need it at the time? No, but it is now proving to be quite a valuable tool for consulting with this client...tracking tasks and reminding me of weekly teleconference meetings. This could turn out to be a good thing!