5 TIPS FOR A SINGLE PARENT TO MANAGE FINANCES IN 2023

Being a single parent is not a joke. You will have a lot of responsibilities and you will need to
keep them all balanced– from meeting your work demands to taking care of your kid(s) and
household in general. You’ll need to cook, go grocery shopping, make sure the kid(s) are early
at school, still create time to take the kid(s) out for fun and to spend quality time with them,
you’d still do laundry, make sure the house is in order etc. The list is countless.
One of the most important roles of a single parent is being able to provide for the family. All the
bills fall on you and one way or the other you will need to settle every bill. Groceries bills, utility
bills, school bills, rent etc. All the bills you can think of fall on you. This is why you’ll need to
learn how to manage the household smoothly without running into debts.
Let’s quickly get into the financial tips that will help run the household smoothly as a single
parent;

1. Make a sensible budget:

This is one of the most important ways to manage your finances.
Creating a budget will help you know where your money goes, it will help you know what to buy
and what not to buy because you will need to separate your needs from your wants. A sensible
budget will also let you know your total expenses— whether the money going is not more than
the coming in. Generally it helps you to live within your means.
Creating a budget is a head start to achieving financial goals too. There are different ways to
create a budget—there’s the envelope or cash system, this is simply creating envelopes for
each bill or expenses you’re paying, then you’d put the money needed in every envelope. This
is to make sure you are not over spending.
—there’s the 50/30/20 rule, this rule is all about splitting your salary into three categories after
paying your tax. 50% for your needs, 30% for your wants and 20% For savings.
You can read other methods of creating a budget online and choose the one that you feel it’s
suitable for you .

2. Clear your debts:

You need to include this in your budget if you create one. Clearing your
debts is as important as saving, if not the same. I feel you should not save money in your
account when you have debts to pay, the interest on this debt keeps increasing by the day and
in the long run you might end up paying twice your debts if you don’t plan to clear the debt on
time.
It might not be so easy but you can come up with a plan to clear your debts. I have some tips on
how to clear your debts.
— list all your debts
—then start paying the most expensive debts, this means the debt that has the highest interest
rate.
—pay more than minimum.
—re-examine your budget and cut off the irrelevant things for that period.
—explain to your kids that you need to clear your debts so they’ll understand why you cut off
some things on your budget.
— clear your debts first before saving.
When you have cleared all your debts then you’d be at peace with yourself. You can now start
saving and thinking of investing too. You can save for your kid(s) college, for a new apartment,
for retirement etc. Also remember to save for emergencies.

3. Get a side hustle:

there’s no bad side to having a side hustle, it simply means extra money
and more money means more options. Having just a stream of income will make paying bills
stressful. In fact, if you want to have financial freedom you cannot rely on one source of income.
You need to have multiple sources of income. Your side hustle doesn’t have to be stressful and
time consuming. It should be something that you can do in your free time.
There are lots of side hustle you can venture into depending on the service you can offer people
apart from your 9–5 job. Let’s talk about online side hustle first, there are lots of way to make
money online these days, from affiliate marketing to freelancing, blogger, YouTuber, transcriber,
translator, graphic designer, online coach, online tutor, social media influencer, brand
ambassador, contents creator, social media accounts managing, dropshipping etc. There are
countless things that you can do online that pay, you just need to pick the one you like and
comfortable with.
You could also sell your homemade products, if you are good at taking photos of places or
people you can sell your photos, you can sell your designs etc.

4. You should ask for assistance:

Asking for assistance doesn’t mean you are weak. Taking
care of the household and kid(s) is no joke, it is a full time job on its own. Apart from running the
household and paying the bills there are still other tremendous expenses for parents, raising
kids can be draining and can easily put a single parent into financial hardship. So yes, asking for
help from the other parent if he or she is still alive is not bad.
As long as you’re taking care of all the needs, asking for support from the other parent is not
wrong, even though it’s a monthly allowance or taking the kid(s) out for fun. Apart from the that,
you can also seek help from government support like Government support. Examples of government support are Medicare, summer food service
program, emergency food assistance program, child care tax credit, insure kids now etc.

5. Be prepared for the future:

of course the kid(s) would grow and as kids grow so as your
responsibility and bills grow. You need to be physically, mentally, spiritually and financially
prepared. So your long term saving goal should be for your child’s education and your
retirement. It will be great to start saving something for your retirement if you cannot handle
saving the two. Your child can always get a student loan, yet if you can save for it please do.
That is why it is great to have multiple sources of income as you’ll have extra cash apart from
your salary