Being raised in a single-parent environment brought with it both benefits as well as disadvantages. Some of the benefits I received in such a situation came from the fact that my mother really had no one else with whom to discuss the family finances on a regular basis. Therefore, I was the sounding board and often partial decision-maker when it came to certain aspects of our personal finances. From this, I gained a valuable financial education, certain aspects of which I carried with me into adulthood.
Live below your means
Living with a single parent taught me just what it meant to be frugal. Living out in the country and on a minimal income provided a variety of challenges for which my mother had to get creative to overcome.
Doing things like heating the home with a wood stove to save on utilities, dividing the home in half during the winter to cut the amount of space we would need to heat, and growing our own garden to provide food to supplement our meals were things that she did to save money.
I took such tactics moving forward into adulthood to help me live below my means. In so doing I've reduced our utility costs by 30 percent year-over-year by sectioning off portions of our home. I've grown a garden to cut food costs. And I've generally learned to look for creative ways to save money because I know that even little amounts can add up over time.
Look for alternative income sources
While a stable, 40-hour work week-type regime might sound good to most, it may not always be the most reasonable or most feasible route, especially for a single parent. Sometimes it takes some outside the box thinking when it comes to alternative sources of income, and my mother was great at this. Being an artist, she was able to sell her artwork at festivals and craft shows, and she also grew her own food, which she sold at the local farmers market.
I took up the standard so to speak from her example. While I have a main source of freelance income, I tend to look for a variety of income sources to supplement this stream. While I'm not selling food or art, I do produce art products of sorts by way of my writing, I make money back through resale options like eBay and area consignment and resale shops, I utilize online options like Helium.com, Textbroker, Yahoo! Contributor Network, my personal blogs, self publications, and more to increase income streams, and I'm always on the lookout for new income-earning options.
The envelope system
For a time, my mother used the envelope system, putting pre-determined cash allotments into envelopes labeled with various budget categories.
While I've never had a need for an actual "envelope system", I do utilize a form of it with spreadsheet tracking. Rather than putting actual cash into envelopes, I break down our regular monthly costs into categories such as "utilities", "food and entertainment", "home", "transportation", "health and medical", and "reserve". To each category I assign a dollar value as a budgeted amount. Then, as we move through the month, I track the cost of associated expenses, decreasing the amount in each category by the amount spent so that I know exactly how much is left in each "electronic" envelope if you will.
This way, I know how much we can spend, whether or not we've gone over in a particular category, and if any money is left over in various categories at the end of the month without having to deal with actual cash and envelopes.
Expense tracking
My mother used to track our expenses. I still remember her showing me her ledger book, a tool I took up until I began utilizing a spreadsheet to make my tracking more efficient. By tracking our family expenses, I've discovered new ways to save, to make our spending more efficient, and to cut things like food and utility costs by 30 percent year-over-year. We've also been able to keep our overall monthly food costs under $300 a month for our family of four and keep our annual clothing budget under $400.
So while there were certain things that were tough about a single-parent upbringing, I found that there were other quite valuable financial aspects that I was able to glean from the experience.