Gas prices at an all time high and the average commute time in most metropolitan areas has doubled in the last three years.
American workers are spending more and more time away from their homes and keeping less and less of their paychecks.
Families with children are especially hard hit as they are often forced to forgo after school sports, parent-teacher conferences and general family activity time because the income required to sustain a household requires two and sometimes three or more jobs.
While all this sounds like so much gloom and doom for the American family, there is another, far more hopeful trend emerging throughout the country; the rise of legitimate working at home opportunities.
The scope of this article is to help you use a two step process to assess your readiness for engaging in a work at home opportunity.
Step One Determine if you truly do want to work from home.
Many people make the mistake of glamorizing how wonderful it will be to work from home without ever considering the reality.
Do you want to work from home to escape your commute? Escape your boss, your co-workers? While each of these reasons in of themselves can provide the catalyst for your new lifestyle they are not in and of themselves substantial enough motivation to sustain your transition to being your own boss.

Readiness Exercise

1. Set aside four hours a day for four days in a row.
   Four hours may be cconsecutive, divided into two two hour blocks or four, one hour blocks.
   
2. On each of the next four days you will write a detailed description of your ideal work at home day; what you would be doing, who you would be speaking with, how you would market your new business, what kind of income you would generate, how you would organize your office, how you would plan your time.
   Most importantly, keep a journal of your thoughts and feelings over these four days.
   
3. On the fifth day review everything you have done and written.
   How do you feel, what joys did you experience, what challenges did you encounter or potentially encounter?
4. Now take a long hard look at yourself.
   What you encountered on days one-through four are the very same challenges, issues and personal breakthroughs or stumbling blocks you will find all along your home-based business journey.
   

Step Two Make an honest and fair assessment - Do you like what you see, or felt as you completed the four day exercises? If no, keep that day job! If yes then congratulations! You are ready to join the world of home-based business people.
Your next step will be to investigate actual business opportunities that will work for you.
There are currently over 1,000 existing home-based business opportunities so you will want to allocate some time to your research.
Next week's article will expand on how to effectively research opportunities and separate the lucrative and realistic from the merely idealistic.