Investing for Women
How to get started investing for women
I am on a personal mission to get women to save and invest more. There are some fascinating studies that find that women are actually better at investing than men, but they save and invest far too little, too infrequently, which puts us at a huge disadvantage. The wealth gap is a terrible issue, as women have far less…
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Why women need to start talking about money, like now!
Forgive me while I break a writing rule and employ a cliché: Knowledge is power. But, you knew that, right? Then why do you refuse to start talking about money? Talking about the nitty-gritty of your financial life is one of the most empowering things you can do for your career. Sharing salary information with colleagues…
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How to negotiate a pay raise (the right way)
Ever felt like you should negotiate a pay raise? I mean, who doesn’t like more money, especially when you know the market is paying higher elsewhere (or, dare we say, within the same company)? Ready to ask for that higher salary right now? In this post you will learn: What to Focus On: It’s business,…
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Does helicopter parenting make you broke?
Plenty has been written about the drastic downside of helicopter parenting — or the practice of hovering over our children, protecting them from every discomfort and failure, that they grow up to be incompetent, anxious adults with a sense of entitlement so crippling it stands to undo our economy (sorry to blame you for everything,…
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Kickass Single Mom Grant: A doula for low-income new mothers
Other ways to listen: iTunes ♦ Stitcher ♦ TuneIn ♦ SoundCloud ♦ Google Play When Tiara Caldwell gave birth to her twins, she was distraught when hospital staff kept the newborns from her for more than 11 hours. Nurses assumed that she didn’t want to nurse. She felt she was discriminated against because she is African American, and she was…
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Kickass Single Mom: From homeless to chef entrepreneur
Other ways to listen: iTunes ♦ Stitcher ♦ TuneIn ♦ SoundCloud ♦ Google Play Ladies!! I am two months in to the Kickass Single Mom Grant project (I grant $1,000 monthly to a mom who is doing incredible things — whether in business, community service, her family, politics, the arts … essentially a mom who is awesome and…
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Kickass Single Mom Grant winner: Jennifer’s Little Hands Book Bank
I’m very proud and excited to announce the first-ever recipient to my Kickass Single Mom $1,000 Grant! In the six weeks since I announced the program, nearly 600 moms have applied. It was wonderful to learn about so many incredible women doing amazing things, it was tough to narrow it down. Lucky for you…
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Are breadwinning moms good for families?
A few years ago headlines screamed when Pew reported that 40 percent of families with kids were headed by breadwinner moms. This is a prickly social shift: On one hand, hooray for gender equality! On the other, swarms of anecdotes from both men and women quickly reveal that this result of the feminist revolution is…
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There is no such thing as a married single mom
So many married women want to join my online support groups for single moms. I get why, even though that is insane. After all, like you, anecdotally, I don’t know so many really happy marriages, and scholars have found the same. Per Rebecca Traister’s very excellent bestselling All The Single Ladies: Psychologist Ty Tashiro suggested in…
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Public assistance helped this professional single mom get on her feet
I often struggle with this platform, where I speak primarily to women like me: Educated, professional single moms. The number of unmarried mothers is increasingly affluent and educated, as women gain power in business and earning. But the reality remains that about half of kids raised primarily by a single mom live in poverty (a figure plummets…
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31 reasons being a single mom is AWESOME (according to readers)
A while ago a member of Single Mom Society on Facebook said: “I’m a new mom, expecting in a few months. What POSITIVES can you tell me about single motherhood?” I responded with a few points, and invited other members to share. Here is what we said: From me, Emma Johnson, on why being a…
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Why you should never count on alimony
Nearly 400,000 divorced women receive alimony — a critical topic when considering post-divorce life, feminism, the pay gap, and women’s empowerment — financial or otherwise. I feel very strongly that every single woman (indeed, 97 percent of people who get spousal support are women) should turn down any opportunity for alimony, aka spousal support, as…
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This is what it’s like to be a single mom in NYC
Here are some of the awesome things about being a single mom in New York City: Dating as a single mom in New York City Nowhere in the world is there a higher concentration of interesting, successful, progressive men — many of them devoted dads. Men in NYC, more so than other parts of the…
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Should you keep the house in divorce? What to do if you want the house
When I got divorced I kept the house. I had a lot going for me: my ex moved out, unannounced (which left me legally entitled to it), I had a job and good credit. Plus we had a lot of equity in the home and mortgage rates have been at an all-time-low, so it wasn’t…
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“My drive to get off child support led to insane career growth”
Erica, 32, a research biologist in Washington, D.C., is mom to a 3-year-old son (Erica asked I not use her last name). She sent me this email last week about how she stopped taking child support payments from her ex. So many lessons here. PLEASE READ! I have a three year old son, and his…
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How I got $10,919 in free travel with home exchanges
I just did the math that led to that $10,919 figure and it blows my mind, too. Here’s the gist of it … over the past few years I have fallen in love with HomeExchange.com, a home swap platform that allows you to exchange homes with people all over the world. I’d used it once two years…
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Business lessons from my hustling 6-year-old
I wrote this a couple years ago, but I just love this story, and this hustling kid. Have a read: Yesterday, Memorial Day, my kids and I joined some friends and my brother for a day of lounging in Central Park: playing catch, soccer, people watching, picnicking on cream-cheese-and-strawberry-jam sandwiches and otherwise enjoying the…
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How single moms can find affordable child care
Babysitters and child care are the costliest part of parenting, and that burden is even steeper for single moms. Even if you figure out how to afford to work, getting out of the house like an adult-ass woman on the occasional evening can seem prohibitive. I hear from women every day who don’t date,…
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Why you can’t afford to ignore your credit during divorce
Credit scores are one of the most critical finances pieces of recovering financially from a divorce. Credit scores are also one of the most overlooked pieces of post-divorce, as I’ve found by communicating with thousands of my dear blog readers. I reached out to Gerri Detweiler, director of consumer education for Credit.com, and author of the free…
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Can two straight single moms build a modern family together?
This originally ran in May, 2013, but I republished it now to celebrate the launch of Single Mom Society the awesome new forum for professional single moms to hang out, dish on divorce, kids, sex, dating, money, career — and make friends. My best SMILF Morghan and I discussed buying a multifamily home together, and reaping…
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