It never fails, I take a few days off and I fall WAY behind! The work that was brushed off during my 3-day excursion to Arizona will most likely take me a full week to make up. This is a down fall of owning your own business or working for yourself: Work is in a stand still mode and NO PAID VACATION!

My extended family can’t really understand this, and feel a little irked that my husband and I can’t spend more time with them when we visit. They have full time jobs at companies that offer up to 4-weeks off of vacation time a year. For example, my husband’s sister has been working for a grocery company for 15 years. She gets at least 4-weeks paid vacation a year (if not more) and doesn’t worry about the missed worked when she isn’t in the office. Someone else will pick up the slack for her, or it can wait until she returns. Not that what she does isn’t important, it’s just that in a corporate setting, there is usually another person who functions in the same capacity and can handle the few weeks when she is on vacation.

Working for yourself means that it’s just you and perhaps your spouse, that handle all the client questions, concerns, new projects, etc. Even a hired employee really can’t make up for the time spent away, the client needs answers and decisions made. All you can do is hope your clients are understanding and are waiting for you when you return. Even if that means being bombarded with multiple projects and short deadlines.

Working for yourself also means that when you do finally take some time off, it’s time UNPAID. Your clients aren’t paying you to take a vacation. They pay you to finish their projects. If we do decide to take a few days off, we have to make sure we aren’t committing financial suicide: No Pay + Paying for a vacation or short trip =  less funds in the bank. In an ideal world when we have a break in work, we’d have copious amounts of cash floating around, enough for us to take a vacation. But this isn’t an ideal world. Usually, when times are slow, we stress out hoping to make all our bills for the month. Then, when times are hectic and the money is flowing, we don’t have time to take a break. Such a conundrum!

At the beginning of the year, I revised my budget based on our Quickbooks reports. Hopefully that budget will help us put extra money away during the good times to prepare for the slow ones. Eventually, if we can continue building our business, someday we’ll be able to take a stress-free vacation!