Single Parents Protect Yourself From Economic Disaster

Build your buffer zone and backup plan so you don’t have to worry about the future

Julia Freeman, Trauma Recovery Coach in training

5 min readAug 18, 2022

Oh No!

You receive the dreaded call from your child’s school. Illness has hit your house and now you will have to leave work early and miss a few days of work. You begin to worry about the financial implications of a smaller paycheck.

Or how about this one? You hurt yourself and can no longer work your physically demanding job. Now what?

Single parents already have so much on their shoulders. What do you do when your ability to work is taken away?

We just saw how important it is to have a backup plan for employment and income. Let’s think through some ways to make sure we have something to fall back on in case we lose a job, illness hits, or we injure ourselves.

The first thing to do is to remain calm. You can’t solve every problem that may come up in the future. You have to be able to let go and let God as the saying goes. Somehow, some way things will work out but we do need to do our part in planning for things that could easily cause problems.

The Emergency Fund/One Month Income

Now don’t freak out about how daunting it is to put money aside when you are already living paycheck to paycheck. Just do your best to start building that emergency fund. This will save you if you have to miss work because of sick kids or an unexpected expense comes up.

Start with a mindset change about your ability to save. Be intentional with even setting aside a few dollars or cents each week. I have seen my bank account at a higher balance than it should be after a tight month. When you change your mindset and know you can and will save things start to happen to make it possible. Just do your best and stay positive about the idea.

Learn about budgeting, investing, saving, and how to be responsible with your income and you will be given more to work with.