Work at your pace

The Bengaluru-based Govind family is a large one—three generations under one roof, and Deepa Govind, 40, mother of twins 

Diya and Rahul, could easily come across as any other working woman raising two children and managing home.

But hers is actually a story of how working from home can be good for you financially and help you manage the household comfortably.

About nine years ago, Deepa was rendered a homemaker, as her M.Sc in Zoology made her unemployable in the IT city, and she did not opt for a career in academics, or, research. She says, “To spend time meaningfully, I started to blog from home and by the end of first year I was running five blogs.” The blogs were diverse and covered topics such as technology, poetry, photography, her personal ramblings in English, and a Tamil blog. But work from home was not on her mind, yet.

Something changed in 2007, after Deepa read an article in Outlook Money on virtual assistants. She says: “It caught my attention and I started researching on the new trend. As I had never wanted to be in a 9-5 job, I realised from this article that one could make money working from home by delivering quality services.” Her blogging got her noticed and she landed an assignment to manage a company blog, her first work-from-home project. The pay was low in the initial days—her first project to customise a blog was billed at $25.

But what started off as an effort to make her life more productive has now become a full-fledged workfrom- home career for her. Today, the remuneration helps her to allocate some funds to the family income pool besides meeting her personal needs. All this while, Deepa was also mastering Zoho creator, a platform for developing web-based applications, and soon enough, she knew how to develop applications on Zoho, even getting assignments to build apps on that platform. She had found her niche. At present, she is working as a Zoho creator, consultant and developer. Besides, she writes in her free time and even has a website, homepreneur-online.com. She also has some tips to share on how one to work from home.

Balancing the home

It’s been eight years since she has been working from home and has established herself as a work-fromhome professional. But things took a different turn after the birth of her twins. She says: “I remember it vividly. It was a day before Diwali and we named the girl Diya and my husband, an ardent R.D. Burman and Rahul Dravid fan, named our son Rahul.” It also helped that she was already working from home to manage work as well as her newborn twins. Being home allowed her to have more time for her children when they needed it the most.

Before the birth of her twins, she was working 9-5, but from home. But with motherhood, she realised she needed to slow down. She cut down her work hours to a 3-4 hour shift and stopped accepting time sensitive and time-intensive projects. She says, “It took me around a fortnight to make this change, but since I had some experience, I could afford the liberty to pick and choose.” The number of projects became less and so did the pay packet, but she wasn’t complaining!

There are other perils of working from home, too, as friends and neighbours often do not understand the concept of work-from-home. She adds: “The most difficult part is to convince your immediate circle of friends, cousins, neighbours and well wishers that you are at work. A casual “Hi, there!!” over the window with the neighbour could turn into one hour chitchat, and then, it is time for something else at home. The same would go for unsolicited sales people and phone calls while you are at your work.”

Support matters

Her day starts early at 4 a.m. with an hour-and-half for emails and scheduling her work for the rest of the day. This is followed by household chores until the twins wake up at 6.30 a.m., when she and her mother-in-law take turns in the kitchen to get the children brushed and bathed. After breakfast at 9, her parents-in-law take them for a short walk at the nearby park from where they head off to pre-school. After her husband Govind leaves for work, she gets an hour’s time to catch up with her schedule.

For the rest of the day, she is connected to her phone responding to calls, clarifications and chats. Post lunch, she spends time with her twins until they take a nap. Then, she sits down for work until 5 p.m.

She says, “This is the time I am able to give undivided attention to my work, before evenings pass by for play, dinner and then bedtime at 10 p.m.” Indeed, there are times when she has to give up a couple of hours of sleep to complete a project, but then she also gets to spend quality time with her children.

The fact that Deepa has a robust support structure at home helps her a lot in being a work-from-home mom. She says: “My husband, my in-laws, my parents and brother are my biggest support system. They are always ready to step in whenever I have to step out of the house for a client meeting, or a networking event, or do some personal shopping, or talk to my bank manager”.

Catch 22

There’s nothing wrong with working from home—the comfort, flexi-time, money, low overheads, and more. But, all of this also means that the income is irregular, because the na ture of work is irregular. Says Deepa: “Working from home has its feast and famine cycle. Some times of the year, you will be overwhelmed with work while at other times, one could practically go zero billing for 3-4 months at a stretch.”

Like any other double-income family, one member’s income is used to run the house while the other’s is kept aside for investment or emergency use. Deepa, too, ensures that in months when the inflow is more, she stashes the money in a separate kitty so that her contribution to the family pool is constant during the lean months.

Expenses have gone up since the birth of her twins and it has meant meticulous planning for monthly expenses in advance. In the early days, the expenses were mostly on nappies, formulae food and pediatrician visits, while now it is more of school fees, dresses, shoes and books. The Govinds also keep aside some money every month to meet any emergencies or additional expenses, such as house maintenance or those associated with family functions.

Being a banker’s daughter, Deepa follows the old-school ways when it comes to investing. So her choice of investments is mostly bank deposits (fixed and recurring) and PPF. Her husband, however, invests in stocks within reasonable limits.

Deepa is certainly at ease working from home. She says: “Working from home is indeed a blessing that I dearly cherish. I am more than happy that I am able to experience work and motherhood on my terms.” We agree no less.  

anaghpal@outlookindia.com