The Adventures of Single Parenting Personal Finance

Running a household as a single parent is no easy task. I don’t know from personal experience but I’m familiar with how challenging the parent role can be when there are two people participating. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to run a household on your own.

Single Parent’s Money
The most obvious personal finance challenge to a single parent is covering the costs with one income. They have to navigate alone the maze of insurance, college savings, health care costs, debt, budgeting, retirement savings, taxes, and more. 

Single Parent’s Life
Of course, life is about more than money so the next major concern is how do you find time to be involved in your kids lives and have a life of your own while still providing for them and keeping the household afloat? Single moms and dads face unique challenges that we can all learn from, which is why I’m pleased to introduce Tina, our resident expert on the topic.

New Perspective on Money
I wrote yesterday about my trouble with time over the holidays and mentioned a lady that would be helping out by contributing to the site.  Tina is a single mom that faces the challenges I’ve described above and will share her experiences with us in the upcoming weeks.

I write about money & life from a married dad’s perspective. Tina will add additional insight to the content you read here as she covers personal finance from the view point of a single mom.  I asked Tina to share her best and worst personal finance experiences to date:

My best financial moment was probably when I was first married and got my car paid off.  It was a celebration, because I got to quit a very depressing job and become a stay-at-home wife and mother. 

My worst financial moment was when I became a divorced mother of 2 going to school.  We had very little money, and I spent money we didn’t have to make up for “Daddy” jumping ship, and not being there for his kids, and to keep food on the table. I was going to school full-time, and taking care of 2 small children, while dealing with the limitations of cerebral palsy. Although working and going to school full time was not an option, I could have been more thrifty and not dug such a deep financial hole. I am continually paying for that lapse in judgment.

Mompreneur
Something else I’m excited about in addition to a fresh and different perspective is that Tina and I share entrepreneurial interests. She left her day job to work from home so she could have a more flexible schedule and spend more time with her kids.  This is something I have been giving thought to and look forward to the insights Tina can offer into starting and running a home based business.

Welcome Tina
I’d like to thank Tina for agreeing to help me out over the coming holiday season and look forward to the insights she has to share.  I hope you all enjoy Tina’s contributions, if you have any questions for her just leave them in the comments or send them in the contact form.

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