6 Benefits of Hiring Your Kids to Work for Your Home Business
Last week my three older children (ages 9 to 11 years) approached me to discuss the possibility of earning their own money during spring and summer break. Yes, it’s a bit early, but I admire their determination and willingness to plan ahead. My 9-year-old twins plan to speak to my uncle about helping out with his yard and around his barber shop. My 11-year-old daughter is interested in helping with my home business because she’d like to learn more about earning money online.
This pleases me. While her career goal as of the writing of this post is to become a defense attorney, I quite like the idea of my 11-year-old working alongside me, learning about entrepreneurship. She could earn some pocket change, learn what she needs to get her Praying Mantis blog off the ground, and I could always use the extra help. There are many benefits of hiring your children to work for your home business:
1. It can help develop a strong work ethic.
When you give your child small duties to complete, she learns about being responsible and understands why it’s so important to be reliable by meeting established deadlines and keeping her word. Children will understand the “domino effect” that can result from not following a project through to completion. On the other hand, your child can also experience the glowing sense of accomplishment that comes from seeing a task through from start to finish.
2. It can teach valuable, marketable skills.
Your home-based business can be a place where children of all ages provide practical help with daily tasks as well as learn about the various aspects of running a home business like research, blogging, web design, maintenance, maintaining inventory, marketing, advertising, administrative tasks, and much more. These skills can be very valuable in the future whether your child decides to work for someone else or himself.
3. There are tax benefits.
Hiring your kids to work for you works like hiring contract workers or freelancers – it’s considered a tax-deductible business expense. Each state’s laws are different, so it’s always a good idea to consult with an accountant to make sure you understand and meet the requirements for your state.
4. It can build self-confidence.
Your child will enjoy feeling as if he is a part of your business success. It can be a real confidence boost to know that something you did – whether it was something as simple as sticking address labels on direct mail envelopes or reorganizing the file cabinet – helps keep the business afloat.
5. It teaches self-reliance.
Most children in our society are taught that the road to success begins with finding the right employer; but it’s good for them to know that entrepreneurship is another option they can pursue. Hiring your child gives her actual hands-on experience as to what it takes to run a small business from home so she has a clear understanding.
6. It can teach them to use technology responsibly.
There’s nothing new about online predators targeting children through the Web. If you spend any amount of time online managing your email, website, blog and social media networks for your business, you can use that time to teach your children about protecting themselves online. I show my daughter how to delete old messages in my email account and show her examples of spam and other unsolicited messages that could cause harm to our computer or compromise the security of my business. My children are too young to participate in social media, but I show them how I utilize these sites for business and effectively ignore unwanted attention.
So, what do you think? Will you be hiring your children to work for your business? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!
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Category: Money
The internet is filled with all sorts of home business opportunities. Be careful in what you find and ask your self does this business seem to good to be true? If you can answer yes, then its a scam. Find your niche and what type of hobbies you have a passion for and turn them into a business. You want to make your business unique and stand out from the rest in order to succeed. Barnes n Nobles and Borders bookstores are two good places to research what you want to do as home business opportunities.
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Well everyone should be careful in what you find and ask your self does this business seem to good to be true? If you can answer yes, then its a scam, thanks for the post, keep sharing.
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Hi! It’s really good to practice your child and be more familiar in your business. But to give him/her a full time work, I think it’s against the law.
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Hi Catherine and David: I completely agree you both – it’s so important to research home business opportunities carefully before jumping in. I’m a big advocate of assessing your own interests, skills and experience when choosing a business, but of course there’s no one right way to create a successful home business.
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Is it not yet too early for her to learn that thing? Kids at least need some physical work. I’d rather let her help in your uncle’s barber shop.
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Hi! I don’t think children must be hired, it’s their time to enjoy their life, we must not allowed them to feel the pressure on being at work.
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@aurora17 – I agree with you that physical work is very good for children. There are two major reasons I am hiring my daughter during summer break: 1)Our society is becoming more and more technically sophisticated, so I hope she will benefit from learning certain technical skills while working under my supervision. 2)It’s important to me that my children know about ALL of the options available that will allow them to support themselves and their families when they grow up. Entrepreneurship was not emphasized to me as a child. In this struggling economy, freelancing and running my own home business has been a blessing for my family allowing me to care for them and earn an income.
@Benson Riviera – also agree with you about children these days growing up so quickly. I want my children to have a childhood, but I don’t think allowing my daughter to help out with my home-based business a couple of hours a week (when she wants to it) in order to earn her own money will interfere with her childhood fun. In fact, I think it could help build character and responsibility, insha’Allah (God willing).
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Sadly, most business opportunities on the internet are scams. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Have you thought of selling, perhaps on Ebay? Writing articles? There aren’t a lot of easy, profitable business opportunities online that aren’t scams, otherwise, that’s what we’d all be doing.
Check out ratracerebellion.com. They are great for reviewing and giving information on home based jobs and businesses. Good luck.
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Kids learn very fast too
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I prefer to do it so that they can learn the ins-and-outs of the business and take the initiative to handle it properly when time comes that they get to run the business
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