I stood on the metro platform holding my severance paperwork, the lunch-rush crowd pushing onto trains they would board again tomorrow. I would not. Six years at a DC startup, over. New leadership had taken over my department, and my time had come to an end.

When the train doors opened, I took a window seat. My phone buzzed with an unanswered text. Not enough savings. Two young kids at home. No job. The rational part of my mind moved quickly: This is normal. People pivot. You're prepared for this moment. You will figure it out.

But the part of me reflected in the train window wasn't convinced.

I wasn't thinking about presentations or reports anymore. I was calculating. How long the severance would stretch. Whether the creative projects I'd been piecing together could cover rent. I'd been inching toward entrepreneurship. This was the push.

I pulled up to my apartment thinking about my toddler and eight-year-old. The neighborhood was quiet. The kids were still at school. I sat in the car with the folder in my lap. This was the first time I'd experienced financial instability as a single mom.

That was 2018. In the years since, I've built CoTripper from a side hustle into a digital media platform with $200K+ in grants and 100% ownership. No job, to six-figure consulting, back to bootstrapping. I've lived single motherhood at every income level: low, middle, and high.

Money changed what I could afford. It didn't change the decision-making responsibility I carried.

What did money change? Some elements of my lifestyle had ease: outsourcing help, a solid savings, more travel and outings as a family. But the fundamental experience of being the only adult navigating everything for my household? That stayed constant. The mental load, the time, the sheer capacity required, none of that expanded with a bigger budget.

The greatest shift as my income grew was freedom of time. With more financial room, I could finally be intentional about how I showed up in my life. I didn't take consulting work for the money alone. I almost turned down a six-figure contract because I didn't want to lose the flexibility entrepreneurship had created, even when money was tight. What mattered most were the small things like picking my kids up from school and asking about their day.

From 2021 to 2023, I earned over $250K from consulting. We traveled more, including a trip to Morocco, our first time in Africa. I purchased my first home where everyone finally had their own room and space to grow. I started gardening in the backyard that had been a non-negotiable while house hunting.

As my income grew, the decisions I could make expanded. I could say yes to experiences, to travel, to the things that strengthened our family. My kids gained cultural perspective and, as they got older, took on more responsibility.

But something else happened too. The decisions grew, even if my capacity didn't. A bigger home meant more to manage. Higher income meant more choices about how we lived, what we prioritized, and where we invested. I was no longer calculating how long severance would last. I was choosing how to build a life aligned with my values.

When the consulting contract ended and I returned to building CoTripper full time in 2024, my income dropped. What stayed was the freedom of time. That's what I consider real luxury, being present, working from home in a way that fits our rhythm.

The decision to leave consulting and bootstrap CoTripper full time wasn't one I made without input. I had people who cared about me, who wanted the best for me, who offered their perspectives. But what I didn't have was someone with the lived experience of single parenting navigating that choice alongside me. No one else was invested in the day-to-day reality of my family in a way that could fully carry the weight of that decision with me. The financial shift was significant, but the real weight was the emotional toll of what I was choosing. Building a company requires an immense amount of time, stress, and sacrifice, especially as a single mom and family of three. My kids' emotional needs continued to expand. Their interests grew. At times I really felt I'd made the wrong choice. It's still something I think about today.

I took the risk because there was no amount of money worth putting down what I'd started to build. What I learned through every income level is that the decisions that matter most stay the same whether you're living with a lot or a little.

When I'm not feeling well, I still get up for school drop-offs because most of my support is in the afternoons. When my kids need more of my attention, I'm at times mentally blocked for days, deprioritizing myself so their routines stay strong. When the walls close in and I'm bogged down, my free time goes to rest. My mind runs constantly in anticipation of what my family may need next.

Finding a good therapist feels like dating, and I haven't done that in eight years.

There are recurring moments I feel the weight of it all. The overarching feeling is that meaningful things are hard, like parenting and building a business from the ground up. There are days I feel defeated or inspired. The moments where I'm able to pause with my kids, or take a walk, or shut down the computer, add balance to the work in a way my time in corporate never did.

The mental load, the tracking, the strategic thinking required to manage everything, none of that scaled with a bigger budget. What scaled were the decisions themselves and their complexity.

Each financial shift had its own distinct pressure.

In 2018, newly unemployed with two young kids, I was in survival mode. Money running out kept me up at night. I picked up small accounting projects, took out a personal loan I'd pay off later, and collected unemployment while I figured things out.

During my $60K accounting manager years, I was comfortable. I wasn't making a ton of money, but I didn't need to. I was optimizing for family adjustment with a newborn and an eight-year-old, focusing on the new dynamics of being a single mom of two. As long as my core bills were paid, I didn't desire much outside of moving through that transition.

When I was making over $250K from consulting, I optimized for enjoyment and exploration. This came off the heels of the pandemic, a particularly rough time as a single mom with no separation from my kids and no partner in the home. I used those years to experience more because I knew it was temporary. What surprised me was that making a lot of money didn't satisfy the way I thought it would. I was frustrated the work didn't provide the career development and growth I'd imagined, which intensified my desire to do something meaningful.

Now, bootstrapping again in 2024-2025, this is the hardest transition.

I'm more focused than ever on what I want to build, but the irony is that clarity came at a time when I have the least financial resources to execute.

The climate right now makes it increasingly challenging for a founder like me, building for single moms. But that's exactly why this work matters.

Single motherhood is often framed through the lens of what's missing, most commonly financial stability. It's a framing that can emphasize struggle over what I've actually seen building for single moms: extremely creative, resilient, and strategic women across income levels.

Money didn't make or break my identity or experience as a single mom. It shaped logistics and opened or closed doors, but it didn't determine how I showed up for my family or what mattered most. I don't know if that's universal, but I think it's worth talking about.

What would it look like if we discussed income and single motherhood with more nuance? Not to determine who has it harder, but to understand what single motherhood actually means across different circumstances.

I'm curious what other single moms would share if we opened this conversation more honestly. What has income changed for you? What hasn't?

Building with this clarity means wanting to create systems that actually support single moms at every stage. Not because we need saving, but because we're raising the next generation. That work deserves infrastructure designed with us in mind.

‍Let's continue this conversation: What have your earnings changed for you as a single mom? What has stayed the same? Share your thoughts with the community.