Should I hire my spouse to work in my home service business?

Question

My wife works a good union job and has great benefits, and we have a young daughter and thinking about having a second child. Her skills would be great for my business as an office administrator but having the benefits for our family is great.&nbsp;
Has anyone had their spouse make the jump from a comfortable, safe job to join your growing business to build a family business?
Did you find that the benefits from their job outweighed the cost of not having family insurance or a steady paycheque?

hugehandyman · Answer

Personally, I would only do this if she would be doing something that wouldn't be the day to day operations. I'm sure she will work hard but it becomes challenging when they miss stuff or mess something up. So it really depends on what you want her to do.

My wife does payroll and that's about it. She used to handle messages with customers, managing the VA, as well as payroll and special projects for HR. What I was finding is this wasn't her baby originally so she didn't have the same drive to get things done. Then all we talked about was the business. Also when things got missed, I didn't feel like I could be as **bleep** her as I would an employee. Ultimately, I think this hurt our productivity.

The other thing to consider is the diversification in revenue streams. It's nice to have other streams of income.

My mentor advised me highly against working with a spouse (having done that himself) and said you should do everything possible to avoid that.

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Should I hire my spouse to work in my home service business?

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