February 6, 2023

Here I sit, in our shop, behind my husband’s desk as I compose this blog. My husband is working hard at a work station next to his employee at the other work station. They seem to work well together. I will sit here for a little bit working on this blog and see a little more of what goes into being self-employed.

We have been self-employed since 1997. My husband has done very well in his profession of being a locksmith. He started this journey, with an apprenticeship in 1985, alongside his step father for whom we will be forever grateful for in showing my husband the beginning ropes of this profession. In a couple of years, he will have been doing this for four decades. He loves working with his hands and is good at it. I am thankful he enjoys his job overall because not many can say that about their careers.

In 1995, my husband was working as as subcontractor for another business and in the summer of 1997, he took time to go overseas on a mission’s trip. When he got back, he had told the person he worked for that he considered doing missions the following year. The thing to know about subcontracting is that if you take vacation, you don’t get paid by the employer for any days you miss: no vacation days, no sick days, nothing, so if you take any time off, it comes from your own pocket.

The person he worked for didn’t seem to like the idea of him missing any work, especially for missions. My husband worked for this man a good 51 weeks out of the years. Within that same time period, the employer told my husband that soon he wouldn’t be able to subcontract anymore but instead would be going back to hourly which, I believe, was less than $10/hr. I was a stay-at-home mom and we knew we couldn’t afford that. He then told me that we would have to take a big step of faith, being ready to go out on our own.

We had two toddlers when we started to get ready for this endeavor. He came up with a name, had business cards made, and we sat on the living room floor after the children went to bed stuffing and licking hundreds of envelopes with flyers and business cards and put stamps to mail out praying that when the time came for him to go back to hourly that we would be ready to go. I remember praying over all the handwritten envelopes..

The day came that his employer told him that he would not longer be a subcontractor but go back to being the hourly employee. This after my husband took his business from making only $50,000/year to a quarter of a million dollars a year. My husband then pulled out a business card, handed it to him, and walked out the door, leaving his past employer in shock. That company quickly went downhill.

I remember sending out those envelopes as my husband did cold-calling. There were weeks, in the beginning, that he only made $20/day. I don’t remember stressing about it but I do remember having to trust God. There were times groceries were dropped at our doorstep. There was a time I had a friend over and she opened the refrigerator for whatever reason and made an awfully rude comment about nothing hardly being in there and what in the world did we eat. I was embarrassed. We ate lots of butter and noodles, mac and cheese, beef and rice as well as Hamburger and Tuna Helpers. We shopped at Dollar General and Aldis because we couldn’t afford the regular grocery stores. I had a neighbor once commented on how she would NEVER shop at Aldi. I didn’t say anything because once again, I was embarrassed. Now, I look back on these couple foolish people that stand out in my mind and wished I had given them a “what for”. We could’ve applied for governmental assistance but we didn’t. Our children never went hungry as God always provided perfectly.

I also felt it important that we continue to tithe which was silly to me at times because it was so little. I remember us putting cash into the offering when it would come by. One time I had a really stinky attitude and was counting out change we collected in this big coke bottle bank that we kept in our closet. I remember thinking, “well, Lord, you might as well have the whole 100% because this does not even cover our needs and it doesn’t even seem helpful for the church!” I don’t think I was familiar at that time with the woman in the Bible who gave everything she had, nothing comparative to what others gave, yet we are told she sacrificed. If we are giving out of our wealth without it being a sacrifice, is God pleased? God had to work in my heart because I surely wasn’t a cheerful giver at the time.

I remember during this time we were getting calls that our mortgage was late and was going to be foreclosed if we didn’t make payments soon. We started looking for another place to live in a mobile home park, and the interesting thing is the morning my husband look me to look at one he had already seen and thought we’d buy, it was an icy, wintery day, and the front storm door could not open all the way because the deck had swelled so it got stuck. We looked at each other as if reading each others minds that we weren’t to buy this. She tried to convince us to look at another one, but we decided to go home and continue to trust God to provide for our needs to stay where we were.

That first year or two, my husband reminded me that we lived on credit cards. This is NOT something you want to do. We literally only used them for our mortgage, electric, phone, etc. (and we had the phones in the walls, mind you, not cell phones. I say this because many things that come attached to cell phones now days are not needed.)

God continued to provide. My husband was doing night calls for I don’t know how many years just to make ends meet. Looking back, I don’t think I thought he was stressed because he never showed it. He was an amazing daddy who loved on his children when he got home instead of doing what the average guy did (watching tv or doing whatever without their family when they got home) I was blessed to have a guy who would help me when he got home, read to the children, and tuck them in. We had a very simple life but I loved it and I even had a neighbor tell me once he loved seeing us all out in the backyard running around and playing together the way families and children use to. He encouraged us to keep doing that.

We didn’t have vacation time because not only didn’t we have a company paying for my husband’s time off but we didn’t have anyone to take over if we left so we would do many weekend trips for many years. And with this profession, you cannot just leave or you may not have clients when you come back because most of his clients were commercial businesses that needed keys made daily.

Our children would be happy just to go to a hotel overnight to watch “real” television on a “big” screen. We had the smallest television for the longest time. We now have computer screens bigger than what we had. In fact the iPad I am working on right now is about the size it was. Our children never complained probably because they never knew what they were missing though looking back we had the happiest, most content children of anyone we knew.

I would say the first three to five years of self-employment were hardest on us but God remained faithful and provided time after time. It would be years before we had our first family vacation. It was in 2007 when we had saved up for years to be able to take the children to Disney World. The business was running well enough to be confident we could tell the biggest clients, who would only want my husband doing their work, that we needed a break and were able to have another locksmith take calls without the concern of losing clients.

One of the reasons for writing this blog is to not only thinking back on God’s faithfulness through not only the good times but the hard times is to bring an understanding to those who have never been self-employed of what it is like. I think overall people have a concept that if you’re your own boss you can set your own hours and take off any time you want and must have all the money in the world. I have talked with other wives of self-employed husbands and this is for them, too, so from one wife to another of a hardworking self employed husband, that I understand.

Most people who are employed by a company will get a minimum of one week PAID vacation a year. I find this AMAZING and it would be so nice. I’ve even heard of people getting paid for EIGHT weeks a year. Say what?!?! How is this luxury even possible?? This does not happen for the self-employed community. To be able to live that lifestyle freely taking vacation knowing that when you’re gone, you are STILL getting paid is unheard of. The employees getting these paid vacations don’t realize how good they have it. I remember one time many years ago someone told me they were upset their husband only had four weeks paid vacation. I listened and said nothing. “Must be nice”, I thought.

When you have a brand new baby, you can’t stop working because again, no work, no money coming in, no vacation time to use, no sick time, no family time, etc. And now they have this cool thing for employees that pay you to have “paternity” time for at least a couple weeks if not months. Say what??? That is amazing but we never had that. I was single parenting it all day long. One time I remember having the flu when my firstborn was just a few months old. I literally was nauseous and running to the bathroom to throw up and it was so hard to care for my baby. My husband couldn’t stay home and help and I had a hard time asking for help. That was tough but I should’ve reached out because I could barely take care of myself and knew I needed to put the little energy I had that day into caring for a tiny baby who needed my all. God was good though to have it only last less than 24 hours. So many sleepless nights because my husband needed to sleep so he could work hard during the day. I felt so alone at times. I wished then I would’ve depended more on God for ALL things especially comfort by reading His Word in the middle of the night. I wish I had prayed more but God was patiently teaching me no matter how slow I was (and still am) learning..

If you are a wife of a husband who gets a week or weeks off of paid time at home, you need to be thanking God what a blessing that is. I look back and don’t know how we made it but we did! When I had my second child things were the same. My husband was at the hospital for her birth, took me home the next day and went back to work. We just didn’t have the finances to take off as even as a subcontractor then, you still didn’t get paid vacation. When tithe and bills were paid, we had nothing left. I look back and thank God that He had us experience the hard times being self-employed.

Once we paid off the credit cards, which took years, we learned how important it was to have a cash system as much as possible. Basically, if you don’t have it, don’t spend it. Credit cards should only be in emergency situations but I would suggest you build up a cash emergency fund but that’s another blog for another time. God really taught us a lot about money and the real difference between wants and needs.

One of the things my husband told me before that I have always remembered is that he was so thankful I wasn’t “high maintenance” but instead a very independent person who didn’t need my husband to make it through the day caring for our children because I was dependent on God. Like I said, though, I wish I would’ve depended on God more to meet needs I probably thought I didn’t need or I was okay to “take care of myself”.

Over the last few years, we’ve been able to have employees but only have left on vacation for a few days: once as a family to Maui and twice to Jamaica and once to the Bahamas just the two of us. Those were wonderful trips and no one, of course, paid for our time off but thankfully had an employee to cover some of the things and clients again who only got other locksmiths to fill in when he was gone.

Another nice thing that has happened over the past few years is that, before covid, he would go to different states and teach classes. We could go with him as his plane ticket and hotel would be covered by the companies who would hire him to teach. We would have to pay for our plane tickets and make sure another locksmith would be able to cover the days we were gone, usually it would be over a long weekend so only needed someone to cover a Friday and Monday.

The other positive to growing our company is when I was sick a few years back where I couldn’t drive for the majority of nine months, my husband would drive me to all my doctor appointments, even when he had to wait out in the car and hear from the doctor on speaker phone what was going on with my health because he couldn’t come due to foolish covid restrictions. I had three surgeries just in one year.

For my first surgery, out of town, he dropped me off, waited for phone calls from nurses and doctors with updates and then hours later, pull up to pick me up. The positive thing about this is that my daughter would go with him to shoot her bow and arrow to make the most of their time at a place nearby the hospital.

For my second surgery that was in town where our business was, he dropped me off and I told him I would be okay and I would call him when I was done and he could at least work that day as he had already had so much time away from work. Again, the great thing is that any day could be “take your child to school day” and my girlie has learned some of how this kind of business operates and is very knowledgeable, something she wouldn’t have received if she weren’t homeschooled.

The third surgery was the most major one I’ve had, lasting five hours in the operating room, and it was the most difficult. I thank the Lord they allowed him to be with me, but then when I had to go to my room at almost midnight, he was told he couldn’t stay overnight because of course when it got dark, covid somehow made an appearance. Foolishness that so many bought hook, line, and sinker.

It is terrible when people cannot have their loved ones with them in the hospital but actually that is where God showed me that I would once again be fully dependent on Him. (Another blog for another time) Never once has my husband complained about this. I do know that if he worked for someone else, he wouldn’t have been able to be here for me or our daughter as he has been able to be.

So, we may not get the paid vacations but God showed us these last 25 years that the most important thing is just being together doing simple things, not needing amazing trips, though they have been great when we have been able to do that!

It has bothered me in the past when people think we should just “close up shop” and be able to go anywhere with no financial concerns. I would love to see people who think this way experience just a year, let alone their whole career season, without paid vacation. I am pretty sure they would soon realize and prioritize who they spent their days with as they wouldn’t have a week paid vacation let alone two months paid vacation.

Hopefully this blog has opened some eyes but also encouraged those self employed families that even though others may not understand, “we get you” and “you’re not alone”.

Blessings,
Jennifer