Michelle’s Story.
I became a single mother at the age of 27 after my husband of over 7 years and I divorced. It was one year after my son was born. It was probably, by far, the most difficult thing I’ve ever faced. I think the scariest things for me was the fear of failure and being alone.
Having two incomes made meeting financial obligations convenient. But, at the time of my divorce I was working 3-4 days a week. I attempted to continue to just work 4 days a week so that I could have one extra day to spend with my son on the weekends but soon found that I did not have enough income in doing this. I had to go back to full time/40 hours of work a week. At first this was very hard because my son was still so young. The years since I have been able to better manage my money with working more hours.
The most challenging thing in this life is being a parent, but I think it’s even more difficult to be a single parent. This is without a doubt the hardest job ever. But it makes us stronger. The best advice I could give to another mother in my shoes is to just keep doing your best to do the best for your child. Show them as much love as you can when you are with them since we are not able to be with them as often as we would like. The support, for me, came first family, later friends. I don’t think I could do this without them.
The next piece of advice I would share is the importance of financial education. For me, I feel that I am always needing reminders at times of the way I tend to spend money. Overall I feel I do well with managing but I also am aware that I do at times spend money in areas I don’t need to be. However it seems that the higher ones education level the better their understanding of finances tend to be in general. So for mothers with little or no education or who became single mothers as teenagers I feel that it is very important to help with their survival.
Most of my financial education came from my family. My parents have educated me in the past. It at times has made me strict on myself, but I feel that it is easy to fall out of that pattern if not careful. So reminders or continued education is always important. Financial education is important for single mothers so that they may better provide for their families. It helped me. If I can do it I am confident anyone can do it.
