One day I was talking to my aunt about my job and she asked me why I don’t go back to school to be a CPA because they make good money and with my background in banking it should be a good fitting career. I explained to her that I’m happy for the time being in my career. What I didn’t tell her was that I’m looking forward to being a stay at home mom and that I’m not interested in switching careers because I don’t plan on working full time forever. I want to raise my kids and spend a few years doing that. That’s important to me.

I hate when I feel like I have to justify my financial decisions to people. Mr. Money and I don’t go out and buy new clothes, we don’t go on fancy dates, and we don’t go on extravagant vacations. We choose to save our money and spend it on things we really value. If we want to spend money on a new tv, we shouldn’t feel guilty about it as long as we’ve saved up cash and that’s something we really will enjoy.

It just seems like you can never win when it comes to money and family expectations. My husband and I aren’t in careers that will make tons of money. My husband’s a chef. Chefs don’t make millions of dollars. They work many long hours and the money isn’t fabulous, but Mr. Money loves what he does. I’d much rather have him happy with what he does than have him making $100,000 a year being miserable. It just isn’t worth it.

Sometimes I feel bad because my family expected me to become a doctor or an engineer. It just didn’t work out that way. It took me a long time, but I’m pretty happy with the way my life has turned out so far. We are doing the best we can with what we have, and I think that is really important.

Do you ever feel financial expectations from your family or friends? How do you deal with it?

Remember when I was talking about creating multiple income streams to help me be able to quit my job and do things I love? Well, I have some good news!  I’ve actually had a few photography clients that booked me for photo sessions, and one family even booked me again!  The first time I took family portraits, and the second time I took prom pictures for their daughter.  It was nice to do something I love plus earn a little extra money.  Awesome!  There are a few things that I’ve learned from this experience that I have learned from.  Hopefully if you’re looking into starting your own small business, you can learn from my mistakes!

photo credit: JuditK

Under Charging for Time and Work

One of the families I took pictures for was my best friend’s mom.  When I went over there, she asked me how much I was going to charge her.  I honestly had no idea, so she said “two fifty?” I told her that she could look at the pictures after I shot and edited them and then decide how much she thought my time and energy was worth.  Instead of having her figure it out, I should have set a price before hand and we should have agreed on it.  Luckily, this was a friend’s mom, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Not invoicing quickly

She was willing to pay me when I did the family portraits, and then said she’d like me to take prom pictures as well.  I told her that she could wait to pay me altogether.  She said that she thought $100 was fair for the family portraits, and I agreed.  I then planned on charging her $25 for the prom pictures.  After I shot the prom pictures, she asked me how much I owed her, and before I could stop myself, I told her $100.  I didn’t want her to feel like she was getting ripped off.  I should have charged her $125 like I was planning on.  I worked hard taking and editing the photos.

Not treating it like a real business

If I really want to get serious and start doing more photography for other people, I need to treat this as a real business.  I need to invest time, money, and energy into it.  After all, people need to realize that I’m serious about this.  At this point, I’m not sure that I want to go full force into photography, so I’m not going to put forth the same amount of effort as I would if I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

Starting a small business can be pretty tricky.  I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned, and I’ve already made some mistakes, so at least I got them out of the way early, right?

Would you ever start a small business? What kind of small business would you start?