by Lisa Fagan

Created on: May 22, 2008

OK. So it's 3 o'clock in the morning. You can't seem to fall asleep. You had another bad day at work. You're fed up with the stress and pressures of working for somebody else. You turn on your TV and then all of a sudden, you are bombarded with messages on how you can become your own boss, earn a lot of money without having to work for somebody else, and have "financial freedom." These messages range from buying and selling real estate to learning how to trade in the stock market.

Before you call that number on the screen, do your homework and really ask yourself these questions. Can you really live without a regular paycheck? What if you ever got sick? How would you pay your medical bills without any health insurance? Do you have product or a service to sell that people need? Have you researched the market about your product service? Do you enough money to set up your business? Is your credit good? Do you have enough money to pay your staff and expenses? Is your business going to be a success or a failure? What if your business goes belly-up and you end up filing for bankruptcy? How many of them are legitimate, and how many of them are frauds?

We all know about Carlton Sheets. He's the guy who was fired from his corporate job back in 1970 and he felt as though it was the end of the world. He starts investing in real estate, and then whoopdi do, all of a sudden, he's making a ton of money, and now he's teaching people to do the same thing.

How many of those SMC infomercials have you seen? These are the ones where people can set up their own business and go out and sell, in my own opinion, useless little trinkets, and make a ton of money?

How about those Don Lapre infomercials about making a ton of money by placing tiny ads in newspapers all across the country? What a bunch of baloney! How can anybody get rick from placing tiny ads in newspapers? I later heard that he was a fraud and that he filed bankruptcy.

When you're self-employed, you have no "financial freedom". Your source of income is the percentage of the profits that you earn after expenses. You do not get a regular paycheck. Also, most small businesses fail within the first five years of operation. If your business goes belly-up, you cannot collect unemployment compensation.

Financial freedom my foot! As much as I've had some pain-in-the-you-know-what bosses in my thirty-one years in the workforce, I would rather just work for somebody else. There's were you have true financial freedom.

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