A home business can help your family get control of your finances and live a comfortable life. However, this is only the reality when you keep costs low and don’t spend too much money. Ideally, you need to save as much money as you can, to keep expenses low. Here are some genius ideas that will work like a charm.
This is a contributed post and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Meet The Harris Family.
Use Your Children As Social Media Marketers
It’s always good when you can get your children involved in your home business – in a positive way of course! Here, my idea is to utilize one of their greatest strengths; social media. No doubt your child will be on the likes of Twitter/Instagram every day, particularly if they’re a teenager. What’s more, they could have loads of followers on social media, which presents you with a free marketing opportunity. Get them to share your home business online, and you could find loads of new customers in an instant. They may have a bigger audience than you, so you should take advantage of that.
Similarly, you can use them to run your business social media accounts. Again, they may know a lot more than you when it comes to posting good social media content. They’re aware of the peak posting times and how to get the most engagement possible. The best thing about all of this is that your kids are free. They don’t need to be paid and yet can do a job that other people demand payment for. Granted, it can be hard to convince some teenagers to run your social media accounts for free. But, they should definitely be up for sharing posts no their accounts so you can utilize those benefits at the very least.
Cancel Out Any Transport Costs
For many home businesses, one of the most considerable expenses revolves around transportation. When you work from home, you can’t really invite clients to your office for interviews. Well, you could try, but it wouldn’t be that professional and can be intrusive for your family. Most of the time, you’ll go to a client’s office, their home, or meet in a coffee shop. Either way, you could incur transport costs by using up fuel in your car, paying for public transport, and so on.
The good thing is, you can save money by entirely canceling out any transport costs. There are two things you can try here. The first is to put all your transport costs down as a business expense when you file your tax return. This means all the money you spent will get taken off your final tax bill, helping you spend less money on tax every year.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to bother collecting every receipt and adding them all up, you could add transport charges to your prices. Make it clear to clients that – if they want to meet with you – then the cost of transport gets included in the service price and may make it more expensive. Essentially, you save money by getting your clients to cover your transport costs!
File Your Tax Returns Properly
Seeing as we just touched upon tax returns, it makes sense to talk about how you can save money by filing your tax returns properly. First and foremost, consider all the business expenses you can claim, which saves so much money when you get your final tax sum. Secondly, make sure you file it on time and with no mistakes. This saves money by preventing unnecessary fines!
In reality, the best way to ensure your tax return is filed correctly – and saves the most amount of money possible is to hire an accountant to do it. You pay them a fee, and they’ll repay that fee and more by saving you loads of money on tax every year.
Consider Buying Equipment Via Auctions
Equipment costs vary depending on the purpose of your home business. There are loads of business ideas with hardly any equipment costs – which is instantly beneficial. However, plenty of home businesses require you to get your hands on expensive stuff to do your job.
Think about it, if you run a small handyman business where you go to peoples houses and provide various small-scale construction jobs, then you need loads of tools. Likewise, if you operate a landscaping business, then you need all the different agricultural and gardening tools to get the job done. There are loads of examples out there, and an auction can help you get the tools you need for a fraction of their original price.
You’ll find plenty out there, and you can learn more at Equify if you’re keen to see how much you can save by using auctions to buy expensive equipment. As well as specific auctions for specific industry-related equipment, you could also consider general online auction websites too. Purchasing a laptop via an auction could help you save a lot of money, which cuts equipment costs in home businesses that only really requires a computer!
Think About Renting Non-Essential Items
Speaking of your equipment and things your business needs, you could also think about renting. Renting necessities can save money as it doesn’t require you to spend a lot of cash on something all in one go. This is especially beneficial if we’re talking about individual pieces of equipment that aren’t essential to your daily operations.
For example, think about your laptop/computer. This is most likely a piece of equipment you’ll use every day to do admin work, regardless of what business you run. However, there are other things that you may only need to do specific jobs when a particular service has been ordered. In instances like this, it makes more sense to hold off on buying the items and just rent them when you need them. If you start to find that you’re renting them all the time, then you can switch to buying them anyway.
If you run a home business, then I implore you to give these ideas a go. There’s no real reason not to try them, and they will save your company so much money every year.
