Home office budget | Home Office Base

Like many of you, I need an office at home, and it needs to be on a budget. My current employer simply expects that I do some of the work from home and, at the same time, I’m starting a business (and I’m bootstrapping of course…). So, I did some online research for the optimal setup within a budget. Below are some of the lessons I learned from that experience.

So, how to set up a home office on a budget? It really comes down to going for a minimalist setup:

Office space and furniture: use what you already have where possible. A spare bedroom is the best or at least a quiet space
Furniture: again, use what’s available. Kitchen table, desk, chair, bookshelf… You’ll most probably will need to buy a filing cabinet and a desk organizer.
Office supplies: the regular list of office supplies (see list below). Very useful: shredder
Quality IT but still, at the lowest price possible: laptop and multi-purpose printer. Important: separate business line and Internet access. Ideally Google drive for backups…

With that, you have a bootstrap, home office setup on a budget. Obviously, your exact list will depend on your work or type of business but you should have the core setup that most will need in almost any case. I get more into the details and expected costs I paid in the paragraphs below.

Finding space for your Home Office

The first thing we want to look at is the space you want to use as your office. Working on a budget, the best option is using a quite(r) space at home, isolated and away from distractions if possible. For some, the choice is simple: you need to use your kitchen table because it’s all you have. For others though, you can use a spare room, garage space or a quitter corner in the living room.

The preference should go for a space that’s comfortable ad that allows you to control the distractions from the outside world. Spare room is obviously the best. Garage is another option if you can organize it and make it “habitable” (think about the temperature in the winter for ex.).

Budget: Free

Organize your workspace

You’ll need your basic furniture as listed in the checklist is below. More may be needed depending on what you are doing (type of business or work) but the below list contains the minimum required in terms of furniture for your home office.

One item that is easily overlooked is a desktop organizer. Very helpful, especially if your office is the corner of your kitchen table. It will help keep everything you need handy and make it easier to store away / setup your workspace if it does double up as a kitchen table!

Home Office must have furniture

Dedicated space (if possible) where to work
Kitchen table or Desk
Chair (or office chair)
Lighting or Desk Lamp
Filing Cabinet
Bookshelf or other shelving
Desktop organizer

Budget: varies depending on what you can re-use. Assuming you re-use most of the elements in the list and the only items you need to buy ae the filing cabinet and a desktop organizer, the budget for that would be $ 20 for the filing cabinet and $ 15 for the desktop organizer, so a total of $ 35.

Office supplies

Office supplies: depends on your exact type of activity however, you will need pens, probably of different colors too, pencils, notebooks, blank sheets of paper, a stapler… Below is a checklist I wish I had when I started my own home office. A few items need to be highlighted:

One very important item in the list is a shredder. How many times do you get a document with somewhat sensitive info (or even just your name and address) that you want to safely dispose of and don’t have a shredder on hand? The shredder is that item that people do not think about at the onset but always need at some point later.

Budget: less than $ 50

Office supplies checklist

Pens (different colors pack)
Highlighters
Pencils
Eraser
Pencil sharpener
Ruler
Post-it
Scissor
Stapler and staples
Tape
Notebooks
Multipurpose Paper
File Folders
Binders
Calculator Shredder

Filing cabinet

A filing system is very important trickier than it looks to get right. You may want to try a few things until you are comfortable with it. Also, depending on your business or activity, you may have a need for a specific type of filling system.

To start with, I would just take the regular boxes. Cheap and functional. In addition, you’ll need to have a safe way of filing some important documents: banking statements, official documents, insurance papers… A secure file cabinet, or even just a safe box, will be one of the necessary spending. At the very minimum, you need is something that closes with a key.

Home Office must have IT

Business telephone line
Laptop (or PC if you already have one)
Multi-purpose printer
Internet access
Wireless router
Dual screen (optional but very useful) Google drive

Telephone – Business line

Telephone is the first item in this list. You need two lines (or two telephones). The “Business” one and your private one. It can sound like an unnecessary expense but, right from the start, you need clear separation between the personal and professional communications. Especially if you intend on providing “support”, either for a product or a service. When that “business” phone ring, you know you must be in “business mode”. Also, making the switch later is so much more difficult…

Laptop

Obvious items and necessary one too. Almost all “work from home” scenario or home based business need one. If only for administrative tasks.

Best is to take a laptop that is a “Chrome book”. With a “chrome book”, you get a browser (Chrome), you use your own Google account (or create one) and use the equivalent of the office suite of software for free. Not to mention the free online storage space.

Apple or Windows work as well but you will need Office for Windows. And for Apple, keep in mind that the files are sometimes more difficult to share.

Budget: Chrome book: $ 200 – Laptops: starting at around $ 400. You can get a very acceptable windows based laptop for about $ 800 including Office 360.

Multi-purpose Printer

The printer should be an all in one (printer / copier at least). Inkjet to start is very much acceptable. Laser is best however for long term use and cost of operation, not to mention the quality of the printing.

You can start with an inkjet and then upgrade later on. Best printer I got was on sales during Black Friday… It was an inkjet, multi-purpose, copier / scanner and printer. Was it really the best from a tech standpoint? Not sure but definitely from a purchase price perspective!

Budget: $50 – $80 for a starter multi-purpose printer.

Wireless router

When you get internet access, your service provider will setup a router in your home. Your point of entry to Internet. That router is almost always a . I don’t have to tell you how much easier and more comfortable it is to have wireless access to internet.

For that, you need to hook a wireless router to the router that your Internet Service Provider has setup. There are a few very sturdy (you don’t want to spend time maintaining them) wireless routers and the capacity (how many devices they can handle at any given time) change every year. And the price goes down every year.

Currently, you can set aside a budget of at least $120 and up to $260 for a wireless router.

Internet access

The single most important element… Secure your network and have your own dedicated Internet access. Unless your business or line of work (if you are working from home) is such that you absolutely do not need internet access at any time, then you can skip this but it’s pretty hard to work without it otherwise. Decent speed is required: 20G min. 100G is better. That also mean a decent router. It should be a wireless also as you can use it for your telephone(s), printer and laptop. Best of all: no wires and you can work from anywhere in your house…!

Google drive

Documents on the cloud? Yes, absolutely. For two main reasons: 1) Backup. Backup your files! Backup your files! Backup your files! On a weekly basis. Every Friday (or Monday or whatever day…).

With IT equipment, you need to backup… You’ll thank yourself one day for that annoying activity that feels like is not useful at all but when stuff happens (as the usually do), you have your files backed up…

2) File sharing. You may very well need to share files. Yes you can send them by email but if the file gets big, or if you have multiple versions, then sharing on the cloud makes more sense. Easier to collaborate that way.