My job is going "virtual"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I work for a very small company that produces books (i.e., we index, copy edit, lay out, and proofread books that are generally written by a third party), and at our monthly employee meeting today, my bosses announced that from Aug. 1 onward, the company will be a “virtual office.” Meaning, they’re not renewing the lease on the building and everyone is going to work from home.

I guess they figured that rent is unbelievably expensive and half the employees work from home already, so why not?

At first I was totally freaked, because I just started back here part-time about two months ago (I was full-time before Whatsit Jr. came along) and we found a really cool day care for Whatsit Jr., about five minutes away. But no way am I making an hour-long drive through heavy commuter traffic just to keep Whatsit Jr. in the day care. So I’m thinking, crap, now we need to find a new day care closer to home. (Oh – at this point I should mention that MrWhatsit works at the same company I do.)

Then it occurs to me: Hey, maybe we can pull Whatsit Jr. out of day care entirely! I talked it over with MrWhatsit and my employers and they agree. MrWhatsit will work from, say, 7-3 while I watch the baby, and then I’ll take the 3-7 shift (I’m only part time) while he does the Daddy thing. No day care involved! We save $400 a month! Everyone is happy!

Extra bonus is that my job is going to pay us a $50/month stipend for high-speed Internet access, so I guess we can kiss the 56K modem goodbye. And, they’re sending all our computers home with us, so we won’t have to worry about that. They’re also offering huge discounts on the office furniture in case we want some.

The only bad news is that at the same time, they just received notice that their health insurance premiums are going up 26%, and they can’t afford it. So we’re voting on which of four new plans we want. Three involve employees kicking in $30-60/month for their own premiums, and the fourth involves much lesser coverage. But I figure, even if we have to pay the fee for the insurance, or wind up getting individual coverage because that fourth plan sucks so much, we’re still saving so much on day care, gas, bus fare, lunches out, etc., that we’re coming out way ahead.

This is so cool.

2

Good for you both!

A couple of suggestions (you didn’t ask, but …):

  • If you have a spare room do to your work, do it. You can claim the office expenses as a tax deduction. Check out the IRS web site for more info.

  • Pay the higher health insurance premium. You will thank yourself later.

  • Don’t consider the extra $400 from day care fees as free money. Use part of the money to pay the higher health insurance premium and save the rest into a rainy day fund. You are not missing it now so there’s no real “loss” involved.

  • The ordinary money that you save on gas, bus fare, luches out, etc., use for making your new office something special.

3

Thanks for the advice, Duckster.

The $400 from day care is actually going into the “new (used) car” fund, because our '85 Tercel hatchback is about to kick the bucket.

We definitely want the health insurance plan that costs more but has better coverage. After Whatsit Jr. got sick last year and wound up hospitalized for three weeks and the total hospital bill came to $80k (of which insurance payed $75k, thank God), it really made me aware of the importance of having good health insurance. Besides which, I’m spending between $60-100 a month on prescriptions right now, and that’s with only a $20 co-pay. I don’t even want to think about having to pay out of pocket for that stuff, or even going to the crappy plan that would only pay 50%. My bosses are going by majority rule on the health plan vote, so if everyone else votes for crappy but cheap coverage, MrWhatsit and I are strongly considering withdrawing from the employee plan and getting our own insurance plans. We’ll see.