How Do Single Moms Financially Survive…

There’s a million-dollar question. How do single moms financially survive? We all know of the

gender gap pay scale. So earning as much as your counterpart may not be possible.

Once there were two incomes, and now there is just one income. Now you need to do it yourself.

Even if your ex is supportive and helps with the bills and other chores, you know you need to be self-reliant.

You also know there’s more to living than just surviving. And there’s more to financially surviving than just paying the bills. And there’s more to being wealthy than having money.

You must change your mindset and lifestyle to survive as a single mom. Budgeting and saving moneyBudgeting and saving money are key to your financial success. Your mindset should look for ways to spend less money than you earn.

Saving money for short and long-term financial goals needs to be a very important part of what you do.

Single moms can survive by budgeting, saving, lowering their cost of living, looking for better deals, and preserving their financial resources. Usually, it requires a lifestyle change.

It’s really very doable if you understand and live by the understanding of what needs to be done and when to do it.

How Do Single Moms Financially Survive

To change your circumstances, you need to change yourself. Decide what’s important to you and work to accomplish those things. Change your lifestyle.

Lifestyle Of Single Moms That Survive Financially

A lifestyle is what you do. To have a lifestyle that you will be able to survive as a single mom really isn’t as difficult as you may think.

It’s a matter of planning, saving, and deciding to live on less than you receive and prioritizing your life.

If you can live frugally, you will survive as a single mom. Frugal living is directing your money to the important things in your life.

It all starts with the mindset. So many people don’t set financial goals. Let’s be honest everything you wish to do or have costs money. The problem with not having financial goals is they never decide what’s important to them. Consequently, they don’t strive to accomplish anything, instead of working towards what they want. They allow their time and money to slip away. Take charge of your life, time, and money.

Set Financial Goals

What’s important to you? Do any of these items rank on your list as finishing school, sending your children to college, or retiring with dignity?

Maybe you have other aspirations and would set other financial goals.

The important thing is you prioritize what’s important to you and pursue them.

You can have many financial goals. There’s no limit to what you can do.

Mindset

The first thing you need to change is your mindset. Your mindset is a collection of beliefs about how you feel about things. To be financially successful, you need to budget and save money. These two things should become very important to you.

Make Budgeting And Saving Money Paramount.

Make time to develop a budget and times you work on your budget. It’s easier to be enthusiastic if you are actually working on something. Make time each day to update your budget. (Track your spending.)

Track your spending daily. Know what you spent and what you spent it on.

If you truly see the need to change your life, you’ll do things to help you succeed.

For example, if you own a car, you’ll need to replace the tires someday. Instead of waiting until they’re needed, start saving for them now.

Desired Change

I need to save money to buy new tires.

The why

Because worn-out tires are unsafe

If I save the money to buy tires now, I will avoid debit later. Keeping my cost of living down.

My children will be safe riding in a car with good tires.

Take Positive Steps To Save For Tires

Find out how much tires will cost
How long will it be before you need new tires
Divide that amount by the number of paydays until you expect to need the tires
Save that amount each payday.
Make a category in your budget and assign money to the category
Decide you will contribute to that category each payday

Support yourself by making positive statements

I’m saving money to buy new tires for our safety.

Saving money to pay cash for new tires will make me more financially secure.

If I pay cash, I will not increase my cost of living. ( I won’t have the added bill.)

If I save money for these tires, I’m in more control of my finances.

Positive statements must be appropriate for the event or item you are saving for.

Do Not Sabotage Yourself

Don’t dwell on alternatives. Never second-guess yourself. You have made this and other decisions for a reason. Unless something has changed to make this decision no longer a good decision, don’t dwell on what could have been.

if you were dieting, you wouldn’t choose an all-you-can-eat buffet to eat at because it would be too tempting. After all, will one more piece of cake really hurt? You have worked hard, and you deserve it.

The same idea applies here. Don’t tempt yourself by dreaming of what you could spend your money on. instead, concentrate on how great it will be to have the item you save for and not be in debt over it.

Focus on how good it will be to control your money and your life. The idea of saving for tires for the car is only one example of many. The more you save, the better you’re prepared for when life happens.

Spoiler Alert

The more things you save to pay cash for, the more successful you will become because the more items you have covered with cash, the less financial stress you will have because you don’t need to acquire debt for these things. And you don’t need to worry.

Financial security and gaining wealth have one thing in common, and that one commonality is it doesn’t happen by itself. It requires you to work a program that allows you to save money and invest.

Your savings need to be worked into your budget.

Budgeting

A budget is a plan for your money. You decide ahead of time where your money is going and how much you’re willing to spend on each item.

An overlooked part of budgeting is savings. Usually, when I say savings, people get the idea that I’m referring to retirement and the children’s college funds. and I am, but there’s more to savings than that.

There are other expenses you need to save for. These expenses are things and events that are upcoming. If you own a car, you know it will need to be repaired someday.

You may not know the next repair, but you can save for it anyway.

When saving for a car repair, I save the amount of the last repair. The only qualifying statement I will make is if I’ve been saving money for a car repair and the next car repair is less than the last repair, I don’t reduce the amount I save. I save towards the larger bill.

If you have no history of car repairs, I recommend $1,000.00 to start with.

If you need to know more about budgets, read my article “how to make a budget.”

Save For Everything

You want to save money for everything because it decreases your cost of living. That’s because you don’t acquire monthly bills or debt. The added plus is that when you need it-its there.

Look at it like this. If you finance an item or event, you’ll make monthly payments to someone, increasing your cost of living.

Instead: Save the money ahead of time, and pay cash. These types of savings are called sinking funds if you need to know more about sinking funds, read my article on how to use sinking funds.

The benefits of sinking funds are

Your cost of living won’t increase.
You pay no interest
Less financial stress.

There’s no limit to what you can save for.

Lower Your Cost Of Living

Let’s be honest no one wants to decrease their lifestyle, meaning they don’t want to give up something to have less (it’s human nature). But sometimes you need to. The upside is if you give it up now, you can come back later and reclaim it or better later.

The cost of a place to live is the most expensive part of living for the average family. You have several alternatives.

Get a roommate
Become someone’s roommate
Move to a cheaper place
Move back home with mom and dad

I know not all of these alternatives are your dream, but the brutal truth is to survive financially, you need to spend less than you receive. And to do that, you may need to take a less pleasant option for the short term.

Some Ways To Lower Your Cost Of Living

Lower your cost of housing (I just said that)
shop for sales
buy generic groceries
Become debt free and stay debt free
Cut your grass rather than hire someone
Wash your car rather than hire someone
Buy clothes at second-hand stores and garage sales
get rid of magazines subscriptions you don’t read anymore
Get rid of cable
Make your own bottled water
Prepare your food at home to eat at home
Reduce your electric bill

About Saving Money

Let’s talk about saving money.

Money isn’t saved until you put it in a category for future use.

If you go to the store prepared to spend $50 on a dress, and you find it on sale for $25 and buy it. you didn’t save $25. You spent less, but you didn’t save anything.

The $25 you didn’t spend should go to another category.

If, after the purchase, you leave the remainder of the money in the category or if you redirect it to another category for future use, you have saved money.

There are many ways to spend less money. you see this information plastered all over the internet. But think about it. Why should you spend less money?

You should spend less money so you can save money for the things that are important to you.

If you spend less on an item or event than you planned to, this is a great opportunity to save more money.

We all start out saving small amounts of money, and as we save, we learn new ways to spend less, allowing us to save more.

Saving money is setting money into categories for future use. You can buy things cheaper or less of an item to save money.

When we had children living at home, we would save a certain amount each payday for clothes. When it came time to buy clothes, we would do our best to buy on sale and leave the unsent money in the same category. That’s still saving money. You never know when a child will ruin their clothes and need a quick replacement.

How many cokes a day do you drink? We all have routines that waste money. Maybe your vice is coffee or candy.

One way to have more money to save is to trim your wasteful spending. I’m not saying do away with it; I said trim it.

You are right. It’s not much, but the little bits do add up.

Not long ago, I had a friend tell me he needed $300. I thought to myself, if you had drank one less Mountain Dew a day and saved that money, you would have $300 in less than a year.

We waste more than we think we do. Will this next purchase help you in any way? Will the next purchase get you closer to your goals? Will the next purchase make you happy in any way? or are you just spending thoughtlessly?

Conclusion

Changing your mindset and lifestyle to a lifestyle of planning and saving money is how single moms financially survive.