How-Tos and Don't-Dos

6 ideas for newly single mums from a finance coach who’s been there

As a single parent, every job is your job. Hooray! But when it comes to finance, where do you start? How do you make a budget, reduce what you spend, and get smart with family fun? We’ll tell ya! We catch up with financial coach Sasha Speed, a single mother of 18 and 20-year-olds, who shares some of her wins and tactics for smoothing out single parent finances.

By Sasha Speed

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the extra responsibilities when you're parenting on your own, especially at the beginning, but there are ways to take off some of the strain.

By following in the footsteps of single mums who came before you, adapting their tried and tested methods to your situation, you can get the financial foundations in place fairly quickly. 

To share these pearls of motherly wisdom – from how to budget as a single parent to reinventing your family holiday – we caught up with financial coach Sasha Speed. Read on for money-saving tips and life lessons, or watch the full interview on our Single Mum page.

1. How to budget: Start by understanding what you have, need and spend

The key starting point is to get a snapshot of your finances and to understand whether your life is affordable in its current format. You've got to know what's in your bank account, what the regular payments are, what the cost of your mortgage is, and the best way to get on top of that. So sit down and map out a budget.

Once you've got an idea of what's coming in and what's going out, it's about giving some serious thought and potential action to adjusting that situation. So quite simply, if you're in a situation where your outgoings exceed what's coming in, you've either got to increase what's coming in or reduce what's going out. Otherwise you're just building up financial pressure for yourself and perhaps looking at taking on debt that you probably can't afford.

Try the Budgeting Tool from Citizen’s Advice.

2. Check if you’re entitled to Universal Credit or other single parent benefits

It’s time to see what benefits you are entitled to. It might be the case that you are entitled to Universal Credit or some of the other benefits. And if you are someone who loathes the idea, you can see that as a stepping stone to tide you over until you stop fire-fighting and can think about what role comes next.

If you’re in a divorce situation, a good divorce lawyer would be able to give you advice about the different kinds of benefits and the different advice centres that you could talk to for information about what you are entitled to.

Check if you can get Universal Credit.

Check which other benefits you could get.

3. Sort out back-up plans like wills and insurance 

We have to think about death and bereavement. We tend not to think about all those really boring financial products, like life insurance and critical illness, or getting a will in place, but they actually make a significant difference to your position should the worst happen.

Read our guide to single parent wills and insurance.

4. Consider what you need from your employment situation

Now that you're a single parent, what impact is that going to have? Are you someone who perhaps needs to ask for flexible work arrangements? And if so, how might that affect your finances, because it's likely that now is not the time to be taking a cut in income.

Is it time to go in and negotiate a pay rise? Not just because your circumstances have changed, but also in line with your market value. And if you can't find that with your existing employer, it could be time to look at your whole work-life balance. Because depending upon the age of the children, and what their needs are, it’s now turning into a juggling act of how do you earn enough money and be flexible?

Tips on salary negotiation from Indeed.

5. Brainstorm extra income from other sources

How could you generate more income from other sources? I actually took in a lodger who was the brother of a friend of mine. He needed space during the week and then went back to his family at weekends. So we had him through the week and that helped me top up my income. Tax-free up to a certain limit too, depending on your domestic circumstances. And a couple of times I even roped him into childcare!

Some of my girlfriends have just gone around the house and sold everything they could that was no longer serving them. It sounds frivolous, but it can actually add up – maybe it's the difference one year that means a holiday fund.

6. Find new family activities that don’t break the bank

We're getting into the realms of thinking about who you are now as a single person and what you feel ready to let go of in terms of your old life, so you can embrace something new and different. You might have found that you were locked into certain things as a couple that you definitely are not locked into as a single parent.

Perhaps it's now time to think of a different family holiday. And kids are really resourceful and adaptable. So maybe holidays with mum could now be more adventurous, which actually for me, took the financial pressure off.

And I'm not just talking about camping versus hotel, I'm talking about different destinations, different experiences. You just perhaps need to think a bit more creatively and lift yourself out of previous patterns that might not be working for you anymore.

And go easy on yourself! This stuff takes time

Just be really careful about spreading yourself too thinly and spinning too many plates. I think we were encouraged to 'have it all' as a generation of women, perhaps by our feminist mothers. The world was going to be our oyster and I think it's just ended up that we take responsibility for everything.

I was still busy proving to everybody that I could do everything and still deliver to a certain standard. But across a couple of girlfriends we jokingly had the phrase: lower your standard. And one of us took it one step further: lower your standard, everyone’s still breathing! And I think that's to do with taking some pressure off ourselves because, you know, with pressure and anxiety comes illness and areas that we wouldn't want to go down because we want to be our best selves for our children.

So start with the basics and recognise that you might need someone to help you grapple with it if you’re starting with zero knowledge about finances.