<p>Now that he has created Microsoft, Bill Gates can live anywhere in the world and never have to work another day in his life. And if he chooses to work, he can do it all by phone/computer.</p>
<p>Rowling doesn’t ever have to work another day, but if she does, she can do it anywhere.</p>
<p>On the other hand, despite all of the “prestige”, the President belongs to other people 24 hours a day, probably has meetings everyday, flocked by people. Same thing with Prince Charles-- for all of his wealth and power, he’s got to continuously be on display. To me, that’s a terrible life.</p>
<p>I’m still coming down to writers and ebay sellers as the most versatile people in the world, with writers winning, because they can still ply their trade even without a computer…</p>
<p>I wonder where actors/actresses fall in this. For example, Tom Cruise has made so many blockbuster movies, he doesn’t have to ever work again. But hypothetically, if he DOES work, he gets probably $10 million bucks for a movie. How much does he REALLY have to show up to earn that much money? A movie lasts 2 hours. Is it possible that he is on the set for a couple of weeks, and that’s it? To earn $10 million bucks?</p>
<p>Tom Cruise doesn’t get any of my movie money anymore. Just saying - there’s room in the world for lots of types, but I’m not supporting some of them.</p>
<p>Art, illustration and crafts all work. I’ve met artist who live in RVs and basically spend the summers doing art fairs.</p>
<p>I like being a self-employed architect. If you work on small scale stuff meetings are generally one on one with the client. (I don’t mind this kind of meeting at all.) The kind I enjoy. However it’s not that portable, you get jobs through word of mouth. And you can’t put it down for extended periods of time.</p>
<p>My husband is self employed and could do his job from anywhere as long as he has his equiptment (multiple computers and phone lines). He has also worked from the beach with the use of a handheld device and portable phone. He trades commodities. I will say one thing though, this is a risky business and you must have the right, non emotional temperment to be able to stay in this business. Many have lost everything and then some in this field. This line of work is my husband’s true passion (he never wants to retire) and that really is the most wonderful thing about it.</p>
<p>Yes, I can see how art could work, although it’s not as solid as a writer, because the writer can resell the same book millions of times, whereas the art gets made and sold once. </p>
<p>I recently read a book “The Four Hour Workweek”, and the author stated that the problem with service professionals is that it is still work based on “time”. He stated that service pros should try to find a way to “package” what they know so that your effort is resold multiple times. He apparently packed and marketed some sort of vitamin supplement. Then he wrote this book. Once the effort was made on the vitamins and on the book, he just sits back and collects money on the sales.</p>
<p>I think what’s important is for people to really identify their comfort level in work/life balance, and then attempt to identify careers that will work with that.</p>
<p>For example, I know a woman who had a rough upbringing. She had a child young as a single parent. But she went to law school, had her “eye on the money”. While in law school, she got pregnant again by an ADA, who had no intentions on marrying her. But that’s ok, he agreed to pay support, and she’s going to be a lawyer, right? Well, she got her “ideal job” as a matrimonial attorney right out of school with a female attorney that she revered. Her intent was to learn and then go solo. She was expected to work lots of hours, but she was fortunate to have a mother who watched the kids. Anyhow, her son had to have surgery. She told her boss “Please do not schedule me for anything on Monday, my son is having surgery”. The boss scheduled her anyhow. When she confronted her boss, the boss said “If you wanted to be a lawyer, you shouldn’t have been a mother!!!” Needless to say, my friend quit. She went on to work for someone else, and never did open that solo practice. And I’m not sure that she ever really did achieve what she wanted to do – to be able to give her kids a better life (and being constantly supervised by grandma because of mom’s crazy hours is not a life to me).</p>
<p>The trading commodities sounds like it might meet all of the criteria, although I always thought that you had to be physically “on Wall Street” to do that.</p>
<p>One thing that concerns me is that most “work from home” jobs that I see targeted towards stay at home parents are scams. And as another poster said, there are typically no benefits. However, benefits ususally only protect you from illness temporarily, and not even effectively. Under the Family Medical Leave Act, you might have the right to be out of work when you are sick, but you won’t get paid, and you still have to pay your medical insurance premiums. OUCH. As in the nurse’s case, she had full benefits, but ultimately ended up on disability. So I consider “present” quality of life to be more important than “future retirement”, because as another poster mentioned, when you like what you do, and if it does not involve your increasingly decrepit body, you can “keep working” until you die.</p>
<p>I know quite a few bond analysts (buy-side, sell-side, rating agency and insurers) who work from home. I did it for three years myself. Once Bloomberg became available on an ordinary computer, it became much easier. These jobs, however, require extensive phone time and often require a lot of travel. The primary advantages are no daily commute and job portability, which is important if a spouse gets relocated to another city. I happened to be chatting with a portfolio manager today who told me his wife is working part-time out of the house. She is an engineer of some sort. I think many fields are becoming portable with the advance of technology.</p>
<p>No, you just have to have connections/contacts on the trading floors (Chicago/New York). The actual trader (not broker) calls the floor and gives the trading orders (buy/sell, at what price etc). My husband says it can be hours of boredom punctuated by minutes of sheer terror. He loves the ride. I actually know very little about the field. It is better that way. I cannot handle the losses or the gains. Just tell me if I can buy the shoes or not, ok?</p>
<p>Well, here’s looking at it from another perspective-- if the US were suddenly to become an unbearable place to live, who could actually pick up and leave it without great financial sacrifice?</p>
<p>I used to have discussions like this with my husband back when they predicted 2000 would wreak havoc. The funny thing is that if the “world were destroyed”, the valuable survivors would be the people who are paid the least in “this world”. The carpenter would be worth more than the stockbroker. Kind of like the question “If the boat can only fit 5, and there are 7, and these are their occupations, who gets thrown off?” In fact, it would seem that many people would have no value at all, because their “professions” are artificially created or abstract. For example, if everyone always did the right thing, would we need lawyers and judges?</p>
<p>Whatapain–I think this is a *great *question. My H and I are trying to figure out a version of this. We recently bought a home in a resort-ish area (near Cape May, nJ), but we haven’t yet found full time jobs down there, so we are tied to our home in North Jersey, where our jobs are, pouring money into a house up here we don’t want anymore. But there are very few jobs in Cape May, even teaching jobs, so we are kinda stuck. We’ve talked about what piecemeal stuff we could do (adjuncting, subbing, clamming etc) but none of them pay much or come with benefits. We live very, very cheap, so we’re trying to decide whether we can piece work together and just buy insurance, but it will be tight. What we’d both be happy to do is write, but that hasn’t paid too many bills yet. :). So, w’re looking for good ideas.</p>
<p>Susantm–the test grading; test question writing looks perfect–any chance you could pass on tips for getting into that? thanks!!!</p>
<p>You could do freelance graphic design and web development. It’s entirely self-taught and all you need is internet access and some money to invest in good software.</p>
<p>I do freelance medical writing and editing. I can do it from anywhere. All I need is a computer, the Internet, a phone, and occasional access to a good university library. I can work in a sweatsuit. I was able to continue working when I was housebound with a badly broken leg for two months last year. I can (and do) work for people I’ve never met, in places I’ve never been. One of my best clients is in Tokyo. Another is in Kansas. A third is in New York City. I have only met the New York City people in person; I will probably never meet the others.</p>
<p>Disadvantages: the pay often sucks, there are no fringe benefits, and I’m always having to hunt for new projects and juggle multiple clients. The curse of freelancing is that it’s your personal responsibility to arrange for a steady flow of work. Nobody’s going to do it for you. Too little work, and you don’t make enough money. Too much work, and you find yourself working 24 hours a day and still facing the possibility that you won’t get some assignments done by the deadline – which means that the client will never call you for another project. Freelancers survive by establishing a reputation for reliability so that clients will keep calling them back.</p>
<p>If you’re the author of the Harry Potter books, you do not have to suck up to business clients by establishing a reputation for impeccable reliability. If you’re an ordinary mortal like me, you do.</p>
<p>Working this way was wonderful when I needed a flexible schedule in order to raise a family. Now that I no longer need that flexibility, the disadvantages of freelancing are becoming more and more evident, which is why I’m currently hunting for a conventional full-time job. With benefits. And a consistent paycheck. I’m going to miss the sweatsuits, though.</p>
<p>I feel the opposite, Marian; I want to move from conventioanal job to sweatsuits! I guess it means the work of finding the work; I’ll need to figure that out.</p>
<p>She also started delving into family history, and this led her to decide that she’d like to do more geneaology work. With this type of work, it’s possible that someone in another part of the country could ask her to help him/her with researching family background. It remains to be seen if this will be lucrative.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine that it would be very lucrative- but maybe " your friend" could work for a detective agency if they like researching people.
But those I’ve met who are interested in genealogy enjoy doing the work and making the connections themselves.</p>
<p>golddustwoman, this may be a little OT but your comment is very timely for me. I write employee publications but have been asked to “redesign” an electronic newsletter. Since my design knowledge is minimal (mostly desktop publishing stuff), can you recommend some websites or other resources to take a look at?</p>
<p>Freelancing is also lonely. If you’re doing it because you have other commitments in your life that you need to work around, this probably doesn’t matter. Those other commitments – to kids, elderly relatives, volunteer work, whatever – will probably provide you with sufficient interaction with other human beings. But if you’re freelancing simply as an alternative to a normal, on-site job, and you don’t have some other major commitment in your life, you may find that you get very cut off from the world – to the point where you find yourself spending excessive amounts of time on message boards like this one just to be able to talk to other people.</p>
<p>Marian, I had to laugh at your last post as I sit here in my sweats thinking I should be doing something productive!</p>
<p>I quit my job last Friday and am lucky in that I don’t need to find other work, but do plan to do something useful–eventually. In the meantime, here I am enjoying cc too much to start figuring out what that might be.</p>
<p>Well, TheAnalyst, when you reach the point where you look forward to a visit to the dentist for the social interaction it provides, I think you can reasonably conclude that it’s time to get another job.</p>