Giving up work to care for my wife. The economic impact of family caregiving.

Giving up work to care for my wife.

I decided on giving up work to care for my wife when she became severely ill but I didn’t know which way to turn.

My wife was diagnosed with stage IV deep infiltrating endometriosis, and soon after, the physical and emotional trauma caused her to develop fibromyalgia disorder.

I took months’ worth of time off work to support her. That gave me time to think, as I had nothing to do at home.

I began to research what I could do to solve the problem.

I went through hundreds of ideas, until one day I stumbled upon a mental health blog written by a woman who suffered from general anxiety.

She wrote a post about giving advice on what to do when you can’t work because of anxiety…

That was it, I knew what I had to do now, but the journey was going to be long and difficult. How could I write a blog and work at the same time?

I found the answer!

If you don’t know how to balance work and care, I give you the steps I took on giving up work to care for my wife:

Explain to your wife why you want to start a blog in order to make her understand, that it’s going to help her cope better with her chronic illness.

Learn how to write a blog and be serious about it! You have to start by focusing on writing articles.

No matter how long it takes, don’t give up, be patient… eventually, you will monetize your blog, and begin to live freely, help your wife, and thrive financially as a man.

Giving up work to care for my wife…

I want to begin with the question you probably want to ask me right away…

How could I even think of giving up work to care for my wife, find time to write my blog, and work full-time at the same time?

Fear no more my friend, I’ve been in your shoes too, I asked myself this question million times.

Luckily for you, I’ve got the answers on finding time for everything.

First of all, think of blogging as a respite time. Here’s why…

You probably have a hobby or passion you had to cut on, or even give up, to support your wife.

Even though slowly I’m getting back to it, at the time I sacrificed myself to care for her, so if you found yourself in a similar position, you might find it interesting…

I’m a gym fanatic. I love working out. Before M became ill, I used to go to the gym and danced professionally with her 7 days a week.

And yes, I did it while working full-time. Fitness was my life, so was my wife’s.

However, when she developed endometriosis, my wife gave up work as a full-time dancer and began working part-time as a medical secretary.

She gave up the things she loved and physically deteriorated. Naturally, it impacted her mental health.

She became anxious and developed panic attacks, she didn’t know what her future was going to bring.

The physical and emotional trauma brought such a shock, a year after my wife developed fibromyalgia.

Depression and suicidal thoughts made me realize that I could lose her.

My wife felt really low. Her suicidal attempts kept me awake at night. I couldn’t even think of going to work.

Sometimes, I had to make last-minute work cancellations, or halfway through working, I had to come home to support my wife emotionally.

Chronic illness has a big impact on marriage, and the emotional strain on your wife will cause you to feel hopeless, and question your every move.

There will be moments when you feel frustrated, impatient, angry, resentful, worried about her, anxious, even sad.

You may go through this process that can last for months, even years to come.

Your wife may begin to question if this marriage has any chance of survival, and like my M, your wife may ask you to divorce her for the sake of your happiness…

But you’re a man, we don’t give up, we fix things!

Now you found yourself reading this post after googling the “giving up work to care for my wife” phrase.

Shall we get to the nitty-gritty of it?

Let’s go!

Explain to your wife the idea.

This is one of the first things you should do. I missed that part and my wife began to think that I was obsessed with it, as if it was just fun for me.

Nope, it was serious, but I made a mistake not explaining the reasons for blogging to my wife.

And yes, it is fun because I love blogging. This is the best decision I ever made in my entire life. It took me 40 years to realize what I was going to do with my life.

I explained to my wife why I wanted to blog…

The main reason was to help other women like my wife spread awareness about endometriosis and fibromyalgia.

Soon after, however, I realized that there are literally thousands of blogs dedicated to it, but a handful, if only to those who support their partners in their struggles with illness.

Sure, you see many caregiver blogs about care homes or family members caring for the elderly, but there is nothing about spousal caregivers.

To be exact, male spousal caregivers, husbands, whose voices aren’t heard.

I created Worry Head because no one ever talks about caregivers.

Learn how to write a blog.

It’s not rocket science, but people often get this part wrong because their misconceptions about blogging and greed for money ruin everything.

If you want to succeed as a blogger you have to learn the basics:

1. Install WordPress (your blogging platform).

If you want to be serious, you have to choose WordPress, period. WordPress is the biggest and the best platform.

It’s a super easy setup and free to use. Besides, it has tons of free themes and layouts. There’s a massive support forum in case you get stuck…

2. Choose a hosting company (like Hostgator).

You’ll need to come up with a domain name you want (like Worry Head, or worryhead.com), and choose a hosting company that will host your blog, Hostgator in my case.

3. Choose and install an affordable theme.

You can buy it or have it free, I chose a free one. No need to spend money at this point, where you just start your blog. I don’t need to explain this part further…

4. Customize your new theme.

Remember, your blog’s design should reflect you and your personality, but also what is your blog going to be about.

There’s no point in having a football-orientated theme if your blog is about tennis. On top of that, it should be easy to navigate if you want people to stick around.

Even though no one likes ugly websites, it’s about the information and helpfulness you give people.

Even the ugliest blog on earth will make money if you give people solutions to their problems.

5. Write and publish your first blog post.

After the first one, you can click publish. Don’t listen to people who say that you need 5 or 10 posts before publishing them.

Blog posts take on average 8 months to bring you serious traffic, so the sooner you start the better, right?

Blogging is one of the most popular ways of communicating and spreading information. It’s a great way to express yourself and a fantastic way to share information with others.

The best reason?

You can make money doing it!

I know you already know this, but it’s nice to be reminded.

Be serious about blogging!

When I began thinking of giving up work to care for my wife, I had to be serious about it. You have to get serious too!

After all, you want your blog to succeed. You want your wife to escape the cycle of endless stress, pain, fatigue, emotional struggles.

You want to provide for her, and the only way to do this is by getting serious.

Successful blogging is a business, and you have to treat it as such.

Set your working hours and stick to them If you truly want to blog to be your business, you have to treat it like a business.

That means setting your hours and sticking to them.

You wouldn’t just take a random day off any other job because you didn’t feel like it or the pile of ironing was too huge, would you?

If you think that there is no time because you work full-time, think again…

Stop watching pointless telly when you’re bored. I understand if your wife wants to watch it with you, but if it’s your decision, skip it. Write instead.

Write on the bus, or train, on your way to and from work, while sipping coffee in a cafe. Use your phone, you can always transfer it to your laptop in the evening.

Talking of evenings – when my wife goes to sleep, she goes early, due to her battle with the pain she’s fatigued.

It gives me on average 3 hours of blogging before I go to sleep.

Sure, I’m lucky this way, but as long as you do one hour a day, that will do. Remember that at the beginning all you have to do is only write.

Focus on writing articles.

Talking of writing… in the first six months as a blogger, you have to focus on writing new posts.

You have to put as many posts as you can, but that doesn’t mean writing nonsense for the sake of writing.

You have to write articles that help people solve their problems, not write about what you like.

Remember – it is NOT about you. Sure, you write the blog, but if you don’t give people what they want, no one will ever come back to your site after their first visit.

Try and write at least 30 posts filled with quality content in the first 3 months because it takes on average 8 months for google to send you good quality traffic.

All you have to do is write one post every 3 days, it’s totally doable!

It’s going to take 8 months for your posts to mature, so the sooner you write 30 the better.

Ideally, by the end of 6 months, you should have about 60 posts. This will help you achieve the goal of monetizing your blog quicker.

But before we get to the monetization part, you have to realize two things:

• It is going to take time.
• Be extremely patient.

Don’t give up, be patient…

If you are willing to be hard-working, you can change your life.

After all, what if you stick with writing 10 posts a month in the first 6 months, then slow down to once a week but never stop, you should achieve make enough to quit your job in about two years of your time.

Would you rather struggle financially doing a job you hate or aim towards something that both of you deserve?

Your chronically ill wife will thank you for it, you are going to help her immensely!

It is all worth spending two years of your time my friend, but the only rule to success is never giving up and being patient.

Forget social media. Don’t waste your precious time trying to grow and promote them. Too early.

Do it when you start making money. Until then, you simply have to write because Google brings people who want to read your blog, social media bring just anybody.

Monetize your blog.

Finally, I hear you say. You will begin to see your first income about 12 months from the time of writing your first post (if you stick with writing).

You can monetize your blog in many ways, including ads, affiliate links, printables, info products, e-Books, e-courses…

The majority of the staff are going to become easier to achieve in the later stage of your blog.

But in the first 12-18 months of building your blog, ideally, you’d invest your time in putting ads on, and using affiliate links.

In the first 6-8 months it is NOT worth putting ads on your blog. I’d even stress 23 months due to the fact that posts mature on average 8 months.

In the first eight months, you’ll see only as much as 1-150 page views a month if you’re lucky and you wrote 60 posts.

Only the posts from the first month or two will begin to get some traction. And it will stay like this for a few weeks.

After a while, it will gradually begin to lift, until the 8-12 months mark when you’ll see your blog traffic grow a bit sharper up.

After a year, you should be able to get between 5000 and 10000 views per month.

And that, my friend, is the point you should introduce ads to your blog, however, don’t put just anything like Google Ads because you’re going to waste your time.

They pay penny’s and you’ll earn nothing.

If you want to get serious, the choice is only one – Ezoic!

They will accept such a small blog like yours at this point, and they will pay you a decent $22 per 1000 views, so you can begin to make 110-220 dollars a month.

Getting such a first passive income will be really motivating. You’re going to feel like your efforts went somewhere and it begins to make sense.

Remember, that until this point you’ll have to suck it up, be patient, and be grateful to yourself, unlike 95% of people you are going to improve your wife’s and own life.

So, keep it up and don’t give up, I beg you, you won’t regret it!

Moving on, you continue to write a weekly post or two, and you hit 18 months mark.

At this point, you can see as many as 30000 to 50000 page views a month. Your advertising company will be willing to pay you more since your blog becomes more valuable.

On average they will pay you 30 maybe 45 bucks per 1000 page views, which will turn into about $1800 a month.

Imagine, this is for ads only!

At this point, it would be wise to add affiliate marketing, which means linking to products on Amazon in order to earn a percentage, every time someone buys when clicked through your links.

At this point, you can make over $2000 monthly but remember – the more posts you write, the more traffic you get, and the more money you make.

When you begin to create and sell your own products like printables, e-Books, and courses, you can make serious money.

I mean, serious money, even 10K-100K a month!

Start living fully and thrive!

Having read all that, what comes to your mind right now?

To my mind it comes:

• 100% time with your wife.
• Better private care for her.
• Time for self-care and recovery.
• More time for your wife and you.
• No more boss above your head.
• No more getting up to work every morning.
• Traveling the world, you can blog anywhere!

I think that sells it, doesn’t it?

I wish both of you all the very best. If you decide to write, I wish you good luck on your blogging journey.

As long as you don’t give up, you’ll reach this goal!

Pinky promise…

Giving up work to care for my wife becomes easier day by day. I’ve made my choice, I’ll never look back.

How about you?