Initiative unites forces to conquer hunger in Monroe County

The United Way is preparing to launch a new, interagency initiative to reduce hunger in the Poconos.The Enhancing Food Access Initiative will bring together multiple, self-reliant resources in Monroe County and coordinate efforts across the food access services. Its goal is to help serve more people and offer healthier food.It's not just about food pantries, but rather groups with local access to individuals in need and others with organizational skills to coordinate the [...]

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$2 million toward traffic improvements could spur Smithfield development

Gov. Tom Wolf and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Secretary Leslie Richards have announced 37 highway, bridge, bike and pedestrian projects will receive $40 million in Multimodal Transportation Fund grants from PennDOT.Of that money, $2,074,563 was awarded to Pocono Mountain Industries, Inc. — the Economic Development Corporation — to construct roadway improvements on routes 209 and 447 to support construction of Smithfield Gateway, a mixed-use [...]

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APSCUF and PASSHE negotiate through the weekend

A day after 100-plus faculty members participated in a rally though the East Stroudsburg University campus, the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties announced a three-day bargaining session series with the state system.The sessions — to run through the weekend before the date union members voted to strike by if an agreement was not reached — will take place at a neutral location, according to a statement.The planned Friday session [...]

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Are property taxes funding massive stockpiles?

The Stroudsburg Area School District’s unassigned fund balance equaled $3.1 million in the 2014-15 while its assigned fund balanced totaled more than $6.4 million.Those funds were used to balance the school district’s 2015-16 budget, Superintendent Cosmas Curry said Wednesday.Meanwhile, the Pocono Mountain School District has not increased taxes at all for the past five fiscal years, and has actually decreased taxes by a total of 10 mills over the last four years, [...]

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Deeds Done

Chestnuthill TownshipJHJF Properties Inc. to Iyona Chardran, Lot 4, The Birches, $212,000East Stroudsburg BoroughRobert A. and Sheila A. Scholler to Glenn and Sokha Morra, 8 Kiwanis St., East Stroudsburg, $210,000Middle Smithfield TownshipG&K PA Holding LLC to Richard Nieves and Omayra Santiago, Lot 56, Section D, Pocono Wild Haven Estates, $211,000Romec Inc. to William S. Lopes and Andrea D. [...]

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Shanwnee on Delaware business owner successfully donates kidney to husband

When the vows of matrimony are exchanged and the pledge of caring for each other in sickness and in health have been duly noted, many couples insist they’d always do whatever they could for their spouse.Local business owner Fran Huber put that sentiment into action when she donated a kidney to her husband, Scott Huber, during a successful transplant on his birthday last month at Lehigh Valley Hospital.“My husband has a family history of polycystic kidney disease [...]

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Frugality and the Challenge of Raising Children

My children get off the school bus each day at around 3:30. The bus stop is two houses down from our house, so as soon as I hear the noise of the school bus near our house, I know that the children will be in the door momentarily.

I try to be right there in the living room when they get off the bus, just to provide that little bit of reassurance, so I’ll jot down my thoughts on whatever it was that I was working on and head to the living room.

We usually start things off by going through backpacks together. Mostly, it’s a way to see if there are any notes from their teacher or anything like that and it usually provides a little window into their day.

After that, we have a “free reading” time. You can read whatever you want for 30 minutes. It has to either be a print book or a non-tablet Kindle (one of the black and white ones that mostly just display books) so that there’s no peeking at games or websites. I do this with them and we mostly read stuff from the library.

Once that’s done, we do a few household chores, making sure the pets have food or water, and then there’s a bit of pre-supper free time if there’s no homework.

They tend to do a variety of things during that free time. Some days, all of us will go to a nearby park and go on a hike. Sometimes, when the youngest child requests it, we’ll go to a playground together. Often, though, the children do more individual things.

My oldest son will often go outside and practice soccer kicks if the weather is nice or play Minecraft if the weather is poor. My youngest son usually reads more or tags along with one of his two older siblings. My daughter, though, she’s a different story. She usually starts drawing.

I usually take that time to do chores, but once a week or so, one of the children will ask me to do something with them. My oldest son will ask me to help with soccer skills, for example. My favorite one, however, is when my daughter wants me to sit down with her and draw.

I’m absolutely terrible at freehand drawing, so I used to draw a lot of mediocre landscapes and stick men, but lately I’ve discovered that I get a lot of personal joy out of so-called “adult coloring” pages. They’re basically just very elaborate coloring pages, often depicting a stained glass window or a paisley print or a garden scene or an ocean scene or something. The lines are thin and the spaces are tiny and numerous. They take a long time to complete, yet there’s something about it that I find very calming.

I’ll sit there with my daughter and sometimes my youngest son and occasionally my oldest son, all of us adding color to pieces of paper. Usually, it’s quiet, but I’ll ask a few questions about how their school day went as we all fill our pages with color.

Frugality in the System

So, what’s the point of this story? The point of the story is that, even though you might not directly see it, we make a conscious effort to weave frugality into our children’s lives as they grow up.

Even in this ordinary story, there are lots of little threads of frugality that you can see if you’re looking for them.

We strongly encourage the reading of books as a hobby. Reading is an incredibly inexpensive hobby. Even if your sole means of acquiring new books to read is by buying new hardbacks, the cost per hour of entertainment and thought is usually lower than $1 per hour. If you do anything else – buying paperbacks or used books or borrowing books – the cost goes way, way down from there.

Not only is it a frugal hobby, it’s an incredibly powerful one to have in an information economy. The ability to read quickly and efficiently and turn those words on the page into ideas in your brain is one of the most valuable skills to have today.

We use the public library. While we do have many books around our home, most of our reading is done from books that come from the public library. We visit the library every few weeks to return a pile of books and check out a new pile of books. Sometimes, we’ll check out DVDs and Blurays, too, and if we’re looking at a road trip in the future, we might check out an audiobook as well.

Keeping a frugal resource like this front and center in the lives of my children means that it’s much more likely that they’ll continue to use it in their lives going forward.

We play a lot of soccer, which is a sport that needs absolutely minimal equipment. You need a ball. That’s it. If we decide to actually play a game, we usually choose natural borders and goalposts. Most of the time, we invent our own mini-games which just amount to drills of some kind, like seeing who can bounce a ball the most times without it hitting the ground or a target competition.

Not only does this help our children stay physically active, it also shows them that you can be entertained with minimal equipment. You don’t need much of anything to be entertained.

Similarly, we make extensive use of the local, state, and national park services. Using trails, nature walks, playgrounds, and other such free equipment and services gets our family outside and exercising while also appreciating nature at zero cost.

While I’m far from the best naturalist in the world, I can point out enough elements of natural beauty and peacefulness and do it often enough that I can see the appreciation building in our children, so that they, too, will be drawn as adults to using those services.

We allow limited computer and video game play, but we don’t have an overabundance of titles to choose from. Outside of the occasional holiday gift or birthday gift or the rare occasion when they save up for a new game, our children do not get new video games or computer games. They share their game collections and those collections are relatively small.

What does that mean? They’ve actually defeated most of the games that they own and the ones that get the most play are the open-ended ones like Minecraft. They don’t just play a game a few times and discard it. Instead, games get consistent play over months and years in short sessions so that they last.

We strongly encourage raw creativity with minimal guidance and from minimal materials. Independent play is a big part of our parenting style. We want our children to be able to conceive of things to do on their own as often as possible, so we try to give them big blocks of free time, especially on weekends, to come up with their own non-electronic things to do.

We don’t load them up with organized activities or kits all the time. In fact, most of the time, we just encourage them to go look for projects or invent something on their own. Make up a game. Make up an art project. Take this box of random Legos and build something with them. The cost for such activities is very minimal and it encourages them to break through boredom, solve problems, and figure out how to entertain themselves without a nonstop flood of “stuff.”

I keep my schedule arranged to minimize child care costs. Most days, I work in the morning before anyone is out of bed, then work again during the school day. I’ve intentionally chosen to have my work day end before my children get off the bus so that we can minimize the cost of child care.

This is something that’s sometimes pointed out to our children, how Sarah and I have both made choices to maximize flexibility and thus minimize our child care costs. We don’t have to pay for after-school care for our children.

A family dinner prepared at home each night is a central part of family life (if at all possible). Almost every night of the week, we have a home-cooked meal for supper. Last night, for example, we had homemade pizza. Tonight, we’re having soup and sandwiches. Tomorrow night? A simple stir fry. We gather around the dinner table, eat together, and share our reflections on the day.

Again, this sets a precedent within our children’s minds as they grow that a family dinner made at home is not only the norm, but it’s a joyful norm. It’s a way to spend time breaking bread with people you love and people who love you, eating food that other people at the table have prepared for you.

We minimize the number of extracurriculars, encouraging our children to focus on one or two at a time to find what really matches their passion and then dabble in other interests on their own. Sometimes, our children discover something that they’re really interested in and that can grow into an actual extracurricular activity. They usually discover those things during school and grow that interest during the free time that we give them.

We keep a pretty tight cap on the number of extracurriculars, however, for several reasons. One is that overburdening them with extracurriculars can add stress to their lives during the one part of their life that should be low stress. Two, they’re not going to be passionate about every extracurricular if they’re involved in a lot of them. Three, choosing a small number to focus on is substantially less expensive, especially in terms of dollars per hour of personal investment.

All of these ideas touch upon core tenets of frugality, and all of them are embedded in the ordinary routine of just an hour or two of the lives of our children.

Goals and Principles of Parenting Growing Children

While that little after school period provides a nice window into our family life, it’s actually governed by a handful of principles that seek to achieve a few key goals. Our parenting goals are very straightforward.

First, we want our children to be able to know how to entertain themselves and enjoy their leisure time without spending money. Rather than simply throwing their hands up and saying that they’re bored and then throwing money at something/anything to provide entertainment, we want them to see how they can find leisure and find joy in almost anything that they have on hand. You don’t really need much more than your body, some open space, and a nearby library to have a deeply fulfilling life, because it’s all about what you make of the things you already have rather than longing for the things that you don’t.

Second, we want our children to be self-learners and self-starters, to be curious about the world, know how to feed that curiosity, and know how to take positive action on it. If you are able to teach yourself new ideas and new skills and you’re able and willing to look at life’s problems and respond to them by learning, you’re going to be able to handle most of the problems that modern life throws at you. Often, we let our children figure out things themselves, even surprisingly complicated things. My ten year old fixed a toilet this week. I gently gave him some guidance as to how a toilet should work, but he mostly just played with the tank’s innards until he figured out the problem, came up with a solution for it, and fixed it himself. His pride was obvious.

Third, we want our children to have the skills they need to be functional and independent adults. This includes things like a positive work ethic, the ability to teach themselves what they need to know to solve problems (as mentioned above), and how to handle the basic things that they need to do in daily life. What are the things that Sarah and I have to handle in, say, a given month? Teaching the skills and knowledge needed to do those things are at the center of our parenting.

Fourth, we want our children to deeply appreciate the idea of “bang for the buck.” If you spend money, make sure that you’re getting good value for what you get. One thing I often personally do is wait a few days and then reflect on whether an expense was actually worth it. Was the $50 spent on eating out worth it? I’ll often reflect on that with the children. “What did we get out of that $50 meal that goes beyond preparing a similar meal at home for $10?” “What did I get out of buying this book instead of just getting it from the library?” Good questions like these often don’t have any answers, which is a good indication that the choice wasn’t a good “bang for the buck” choice.

Finally, we want our children to know that they are loved and supported, but that love and support doesn’t mean that we’ll make life’s challenges disappear for them. Life is going to be challenging. They’re going to have hard teachers and hard professors and, eventually, hard bosses. They’re going to take classes that challenge their mind, they’re going to face social situations that challenge their values, and they’re going to face professional situations that challenge their heart. Mom and dad aren’t going to make those challenges disappear. Instead, we want to give them everything we can to solve those challenges on their own with the knowledge that there are always two people who love and support them, no matter what.

How Those Principles Become Frugal

One natural theme running through those principles and through everything presented here is frugality. Frugality isn’t just a “lesson” that we teach our children, it’s deeply baked into how we live our lives and the choices we make as parents.

Knowing how to self-entertain with limited resources leads to frugality. Our children are constantly challenged to find ways to entertain themselves and to learn on their own without someone telling them specifically what to do and without giving them a ton of supplies. They figure out fun on their own, without stuff.

Having the confidence to tackle lots of life problems on your own (like, say, repairing a toilet) is incredibly frugal. They don’t need hand-holding or coaching to tackle the things that life throws at them. They do it themselves, and when frustration turns to asking mom or dad for help, they get just a hug and a pointer or two. Mom and Dad don’t do it for them. It’s up to them to do it. That’s because, when they do eventually succeed – and they usually do – it’s incredibly rewarding and it’s an incredible boost to self-confidence. We don’t need to throw money at problems and we’re teaching them that they don’t have to, either.

Minimizing extracurricular activities and giving plenty of space to exploring new interests and ideas is incredibly frugal. Rather than investing a lot of money in a large handful of extracurricular activities, we try to give our children plenty of space to discover new interests on their own with a minimal financial investment. Instead of signing up for the baseball team, why not try out baseball on the playground? Instead of going to expensive art sessions, why not try to emulate a van Gogh painting at the family table? Try lots of things. Figure out what clicks in your heart, and learn that it’s okay if things don’t click, even if your friends are passionate about that thing. It doesn’t take expensive extracurriculars to figure out who you are and what you’re passionate about.

Making frugal lifestyle choices normal. Simple meals cooked at home? That’s the norm, and we work to keep it as the norm. Family movie nights together in the basement with popcorn we pop ourselves? That’s the norm, and we work to keep it as the norm. Family activities that center around free things, like hikes in state parks? That’s the norm, and we work to keep it the norm. Buying store brands and using them? That’s the norm, and we work to keep it the norm. We don’t make frugal things or free things into the exception. We don’t celebrate how we’re being “frugal” this weekend and then abandoning the idea by Monday afternoon. These low-cost methods – and many others – are normal at our house. Sure, we might point out the cost-saving benefits sometimes, but the frugal choice itself is the normal choice.

Discussing the choices we make when they’re no longer fresh or emotionally fraught. One of my favorite parenting techniques – and one I use on myself – is to take a decision made a few days ago, whether it’s a money-related decision or just a personal decision, and then go through it again. Was it the right choice? Did I get the best overall outcome? Was I swayed in that moment by some emotion? I do this constantly with my own choices in order to make better choices going forward, and I often do it with my children and turn it into a conversation with them. This isn’t just useful as a problem solving discussion, but it slowly awakens a similar questioning in their own lives that will inevitably lead them to a better (and more frugal) life.

Final Thoughts

Parenting is hard. You move from the sleepless nights with a baby to the flood of basic life skill teaching with toddlers into that period of older childhood and the teen years when you’re trying to mold those children into adults with a good set of tools inside of them to handle all of the challenges that life throws at them.

I don’t want my children to repeat mistakes I’ve made, financially or otherwise. I know they’re going to make mistakes in life, but I want them to have the best set of internal tools I can possibly give them to make a better set of choices than I did.

Maybe, just maybe, they won’t wind up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Maybe, just maybe, they won’t make giant career missteps. Maybe, just maybe, they won’t get caught up in a cycle of trying to impress others that inevitably leads to nothing at all.

All I can do is give them the best set of internal tools I can.

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How to Ship Wine (Legally) Through the Mail

With the holidays fast approaching, many people aged 21 and older are getting ready to put down their kale smoothies and pick up the bottle of vino. That’s right — between Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, drinking season is upon us. Since it’s also a time of gift-giving, many more will try to navigate the labyrinth of rules that govern how to ship wine through the mail.

For a country built by booze-loving colonials who in large part believed, “Alcohol could cure the sick, strengthen the weak, enliven the aged, and generally make the world a better place,” we Americans sure do make it complicated to ship wine to one another.

If you are ready to take up the challenge, here’s what you need to know.

How to Ship Wine: General Overview

First of all, the most important thing to keep in mind is that it’s illegal for one individual to ship any amount of wine to another person through the mail in the United States, regardless of where you live or whether you try the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, or FedEx.

That doesn’t mean you can’t send wine to someone — but you can’t just stuff it in a box and slap a few stamps on it. Unless you’re willing to take a big risk and break the law, to ship wine you need to buy it from a company who’s certified to deliver it. The good news is, plenty of companies are licensed to ship wine to most states. 

Depending on the quantity you’re sending and where it’s going, there could be additional hurdles to overcome. For instance, if you want to send wine to a friend in Oklahoma, you’re out of luck: The Sooner State doesn’t allow it, and you might be looking at a felony if you get caught trying.

While the law is mostly the same in Delaware, there’s one important loophole: If you’re a resident of Delaware and you’re visiting a winery in a different state, you can send yourself back a few bottles. 

The strictest laws, by far, are found in Utah, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, and Delaware. Pay particularly close attention to the rules if you’re sending wine to those states. An updated master list of all the state law nuances can be found by searching the alcohol statutes over at The National Conference of State Legislatures website. 

But, keep in mind that that these laws are constantly changing. Massachusetts started allowing direct shipments from vineyards only last year. If you live in a state where it’s hard to get wine, your best bet to change things is to make sure you get out and vote.

Best Ways to Ship Wine

Join a Club

If it seems like you’re constantly being bombarded with advertisements trying to get you to join the latest and greatest wine club, it’s because they’re quickly becoming a major player in the alcohol sales game. They’re also one of the easiest ways to get wine delivered to your doorstep or as a gift to someone else’s.

If price is a factor, wine clubs are increasingly a great way to go. As Sandra Hess, the founder of DTC Wine Workshops states, “There’s a lot of competition out there.” Thanks to good ol’ capitalism, the prices at wine clubs are being driven down, and there should be an affordable option available to you this holiday season. 

Order from a Winery or Vineyard

Fun fact: Every single state in the U.S. currently produces wine. Even Alaska produces wine, people! With such a plethora of wineries to choose from, you’d be wise to check whether there’s a winery near the lucky person you’re looking to send it to.

Sure, you might not be able to send them the exact bottle of California Cabernet you initially had in mind. But if they’re fans of the winery or simply like to support local businesses, ordering this way is a no-brainer. Since the whole transaction is happening in-state, there are fewer regulatory hurdles to overcome.

And if the person absolutely loves a particular wine that’s produced out of state, it never hurts to check if you can buy some from the the winery that produces it. Some wineries have special permission to ship across state lines. 

Buy Online

As is rapidly becoming the case with most industries, buying wine online is a fairly simple option. Pick one of the major online retailers (Wine Folly has  a good list of them), select a bottle that looks good, confirm they can ship wine to the state your friend lives in, and you’re all set. With Amazon.com’s entry onto the alcohol shipment scene in 2012, it’s never been easier to send wine around the country.

Meanwhile, alcohol-delivery apps such as Drizzly partner with liquor stores in major markets who can deliver booze to local residents – meaning you can order and pay for a bottle of wine to be delivered to a friend across the country in as little as an hour, all from your smartphone.  

Send a Gift Card

Okay, this isn’t technically shipping wine, but sometimes it’s the best option. For one thing, all wine shipments and deliveries require that someone at least 21 years old be there to sign for them. If your delivery happens to show up when no one’s home – or the only person around is your 14-year-old nephew — you’re out of luck. Your gift may be delayed, and the wine might even go bad sitting a shipping facility where temperatures are too high or too low. 

Giving a gift card — to a wine store, local vineyard, or other wine retailer – lets the recipient choose a local wine at his or her leisure, and there’s no chance of anything bad happening to their bottles in transit. 

Summing Up

The key to shipping wine without stressing out is to remember that the wine clubs, stores, and wineries have well-paid people on staff to make sure all the rules are followed. As long as you stick to the above options and don’t try to sneak a personal bottle to your friend via the USPS, you should be fine.

Related Articles:

• 10 Heartfelt Gifts for People Who Have Everything
• How to Frugally Ship Packages
• Wine, Blind Taste Tests, and Your Money

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Done With the Freelance Life? Here’s How to Transition to a 9-to-5 Job

There’s a lot of advice out there for people ditching their 9-to-5 jobs for freelance life. Some of it has come from this very website, because we’re supportive of alternative career strategies.

Hustle is hustle, right?

But what happens when you get an amazing job offer and decide to ditch your freelance life for a day job?

After five years being my own boss, I was so tired. Working for yourself is empowering, but it can also be emotionally and physically taxing. I wanted a support system for the next phase of my career.

Since I had already worked for The Penny Hoarder as a freelance writer, I thought switching over to life as a full-time employee would be easy. Seamless, even.

I wasn’t worried until my mom asked if I was ready for the change. “Are you going to be OK with this?” she asked, not unkindly. “Are you ready to give up your freedom?”

Way to be a downer, Mom. I started looking for advice for transitioning successfully, and found few options. Had no one else made this decision before?

Ultimately, I went bravely where so many thirtysomethings have gone before: to work.

Here are a few lessons for those doing the same, both with gusto and relative ease.

Don’t Change Your Routine Overnight

Prepare for your new job like you used to prepare for the first day of school. Pack your bag, plan your lunch, iron your shirt and get a good night’s sleep.

But if your new job presents a dramatic schedule change, you’ll need to plan further ahead for a smooth transition.

As a freelance writer, I typically worked from 10 or 10:30 a.m. until 6 or 7 p.m. Morning meetings? Something I tried to avoid.

I still thought I’d suddenly start popping out of bed around 8 each morning.

You know what happened? I overslept on my second day of my new job.

My supervisor forgave me, but I (still!) remain mortified to admit this transgression to the public.

If you’re changing your routine to take a full-time job, give yourself at least two weeks to shift your sleep schedule. The National Sleep Foundation suggests adjusting your lights-out time in 15-minute increments; a slow transition will be easier on your body than an abrupt change.

Get Ready to Communicate. A Lot.

When you’re a freelancer, no one really cares how you get from point A to point B as long as you get the work done.

When you go back to work for someone else, get ready to communicate early and often. Your boss may not look over your shoulder all the time (we can hope, right?), but do expect to provide regular updates on the tasks you’re focusing on. You can’t ghost while you’re polishing all your projects to perfection.

This isn’t the time to get in the habit of sending long-winded memos, either. However, you should check in by email, Slack, or your team’s preferred method of not actually speaking to one another to provide updates on your work. You will find the right balance between MIA and TMI quickly.

Ask Questions, and Don’t Apologize for a Single One of Them

As a freelancer you figure everything out, from tax payments to health insurance. Meanwhile, your full-time job is likely to come with benefits you haven’t seen in years, if ever.

Don’t skimp on the chance to read over your benefits documents and ask your office’s human-resources team lots of questions.

I still notice that when I send a question to our HR pro, I usually start with a phrase that minimizes my request, like, “I have a silly question for you,” or “this might seem crazy, but…”

Stop doing that! When it comes to the complex world of earnings, withholding, benefits and perks, you can’t possibly expect to know it all.

Ask away. Learn.

“I found that transitioning back into full-time work was pretty easy,” Marian Schembari, who later went back to self-employment when she launched Oh Hai Copy. “It was such a relief to not think about work all the time. To have someone else calling the shots. To go home at a reasonable hour and not check work emails at 2 a.m.”

But she admits that full-time work eventually stifled the entrepreneurial mindset she had developed.

“It’s easy to forget that just because you have a traditional job doesn’t mean you have to be a traditional employee,” she says. “Granted, your freedom to get creative and push back really depends on your new manager, but it doesn’t hurt to think through what more creative skills you bring to the table and really try to turn your new job into a flexible role you’ll love for years.”

Go home at 5 p.m. when you can. Do not check your email at 2 a.m. But do keep an eye out for opportunities to thrive in your new role.

Give Yourself a Break

You’re experiencing a big change, so be nice to yourself. My role at The Penny Hoarder requires little to no physical activity, but I was surprised by how physically tired I was at the end of a full day of work. My brain felt fried, and my maladjusted sleep schedule (see above) wasn’t helping.

The solution? Try to chill out.

First, I tried not to overschedule my evenings during the first few weeks of my full-time job. It’s easier said than done, especially when you used to do laundry at any old time of day and now you’re banishing your home tasks, like doing dishes and cooking, to the evening hours.

I’m still moonlighting on some freelance-writing projects, but taking a break between “shifts” has been essential for survival. Take a power nap, go to the gym, have dinner with your family — take time to reset before you get back to work.

Spending even just a half-hour at the gym in the early evening has helped me stir up a bit more energy for my after-work tasks, while clearing my head for fresh thoughts to percolate.

And while you’re thinking about clocking out at 5, start thinking about your newly found vacation time. “Freelancers are really bad at stopping, ever,” Dana Sitar, a freelance blogger before joining The Penny Hoarder, says. “When you work a 9-5, you should stop on evenings and weekends and take your allotted vacation.”

“I find comfort and even more productivity in teamwork and delegation,” Lizabeth Cole, our director of media relations, admits. “I have also found more time to be present with my friends and family, or at a Pilates class because the decision that I made [to take a full-time job] allowed me to reel in the guilt and 24/7 schedule that freelancing had me locked into.”

There’s a lot of talk about the perks of freelance life, but I think I’ll enjoy life as a full-timer for a while.

Your Turn: Have you ever left the freelance ranks to take a 9-to-5 job? What lessons would you share from your transition?

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