Intro |
Gain Your Ammunition |
Build Your Courage |
Transition Successfully
Intro
While it may prove a bit more challenging for you, as a single
parent, to find your way home, there are many avenues that will
help you approach your goal. Your challenges to creating a home-based
lifestyle are, in fact, very similar to that of the dual-income
working parent. You will have to overcome indecision and build
your courage just as a married parent would. As a single
parent, of course, you alone are responsible for your household
and for bringing in an income. You have to keep the roof over
your head and food on the table, and in this sense your journey
home may be more challenging than that of the dual income parent. However,
because you are more likely to be making decisions yourself,
your decision-making may be less complicated. You will be able
to use this book in similar ways as the dual-income parent,
where you will address and overcome obstacles in a step-by-step
manner. Finding Your Way Home includes a comprehensive
section to help you, the single parent, do just that.
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Gain Your Ammunition
Here you will begin to address the reasons you wish to scale
back your working life in order to create more time at home. These
reasons are the very same as those of the married working parent.
To find out more, simply review Ten Compelling Reasons on this
web site. Select those that apply most to your situation and
keep these compelling reasons in the forefront of your mind
as your build your courage and explore your options for making
a change to a more family-friendly lifestyle.
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Build Your Courage
In this section you will start with the The Porch Swing Test
to analyze your deepest wishes for a new lifestyle. You will
begin to visualize the life you want to create. Then, you will
begin to perform the concrete analysis needed to determine exactly
how you will carry out your plans. An important part of this
section will be evaluating your finances. You will carry this
out in the same manner as the dual working parent by first examining
your costs of working and creating a household budget listing
your needs and likes. See Examine Your Finances. From here,
your analysis will be a bit different in that you will be cutting
expenses not to take a two-income budget to one, but to look
at your rock bottom absolute must-have income to maintain your
household. This section will guide you through this process
and give you many options to your current full-time work schedule.
You will examine pros and cons of part-time, flex-time, work-at-home,
free-lance and home-based business options. Also discussed is
a more radical option of live-in caregiving arrangements, which
may have appeal as a way to create a full-time at-home lifestyle. What
to look for and how to find these arrangements is presented. Finally
in this section, you will select your best option and write
a plan of action that will put you squarely on the road home.
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Transition Successfully
Transitioning to a more flexible, home-based lifestyle will
present challenges similar to that of the dual-working parent
who comes home. Managing your new schedule, handling resistance
by others, taking care of your children at home, taking care
of yourself, managing your household and staying motivated will
be the same challenges as the married parent. See Transitioning
Successfully. Finally you will hear from other single parents
who have created home-based lifestyles and will urge you to
realize, “There is more value to our children than the
stuff we think we need.”
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