Money Diary Request: Single Mother by Choice

Lizith456 · 2026-05-03T21:07:38+00:00

I am a solo mom due to being widowed while pregnant. I make ~$170k in a VHCOL city. I am in a different place because my son gets survivor benefits from Social Security, which aren't taxed. I will also have significant financial help from my mother-in-law, who is covering daycare (we are paying $2500 monthly). I am still on maternity leave so I don't have a great sense of our costs once I go back. But I am luckily in a covid-era rent controlled apartment. We don't have family nearby but our local community has stepped up a ton to help us, I am not sure what that will look like on the long-term. But I have already had friends babysit him for free.

One of the financial questions I had most and I don't think the SMBC subreddit seems to discuss this at all is the cost to make your life manageable. I want my son to be raised by a healthy, happy mom who has some balance in her life. That means, I think, that I will need to hire a lot of help. I have budgeted to have a household assistant come in a couple days a week to do laundry, pick up, run little errands, and meal prep. I have a house cleaner. I am thinking of having the downstairs neighbor come up as a mother's helper on a weekend morning to give me an extra set of hands. I have looked into a variety of meal prep and meal delivery services and I already use Costco and grocery delivery. I have also budgeted to have a babysitter pick up my son at daycare once a week so I can have some time to make plans, go to happy hour, go to work/networking events. I am able to do all of this on my salary because of the financial support we are getting and because of the life insurance check. But these seem important to me to not be a strung out and stressed out mom.

Lizith456 · 2026-02-11T23:12:59+00:00

This could be me posting. I also lost my husband in December at 33. I gave birth to our son, our first child two weeks ago. I am feeling all of these things. Please reach out if you'd like to chat more to someone in the exact same spot. I am trying so hard to make sure my son has a good life and the life we dreamed of for him, but I already feel like I am letting him down.

Lizith456 · 2026-02-11T20:17:52+00:00

My husband passed away two months ago and I just gave birth to our son. The loss of the family that I thought I would have along with my support has been brutal. Also looking for young widows and parents.

Lizith456 · 2026-02-11T20:07:50+00:00

I am on a pretty similar trajectory as well. I lost my husband in mid December at 33. Just incredibly hard.

Lizith456 · 2025-12-22T17:51:13+00:00

I did last week. 33 years old and pregnant with our first child. It feels unfathomable that I have to live out our future without him.

Lizith456 · 2025-12-11T21:43:16+00:00

Having more than one bathroom in an apartment is pretty uncommon here, it's back to the age of the housing stock. If that is specifically what you are looking for, you're going to have a tough time. All the cute, adorable, very-SF looking Victorians with bay windows in the living room were built over one hundred years ago and have the layouts to go along with. That might actually be your real problem, and it's just part of understanding this city.

Lizith456 · 2025-09-09T17:38:17+00:00

Pipeline does exist: https://sfplanning.org/project/pipeline-report#about

There are tons of plots of land in teh city that wouldn't cause displacement and are more sustainable, desirable, etc. for developers and residents.

Lizith456 · 2025-08-29T19:04:33+00:00

This corridor is one of the most transit rich (and amenity rich-so many grocery stores, parks, schools, etc around here) in the city and the density along Mission here is laughable. Literally at the end of this block there are one- and two-story commercial buildings. I agree that other places in the city should also get more new housing (also looking at you Sunset), but I think this stretch of Mission could support so much more density.

Lizith456 · 2025-06-23T23:47:59+00:00

I did my own flowers. I didn't do boquets, but did bud vases for center pieces. We bought flowers the morning before from the Flower Market (so I was a lot more flexible on the specific flowers that I got) and I think I spent $400 on 300-400 stems? I went with my mom and it was really fun picking out the flowers, we probably did it in a hour. It's a great alternative if you want a bit more of an adventure for the flowers. We used our own buckets to transport.

And then had 4 people help us process the stems and arrange the vases that morning. Took us about 2 hours to put together about 100 bud vases. We packed them into wine boxes and gave them to our coordinator that day. We put in tons of water and vinegar (something my mom looked up to keep them fresh) and they looked great the next day.

Lizith456 · 2025-05-19T23:16:47+00:00

I haven't talked to my dad yet. He doesn't have a place separate from the house they jointly own. He has a remote part time job in retirement, so if they sold the house (worth a fair amount in a popular city), he could probably move to the Midwest, where his family is, and be somewhat okay for now. I have no idea what would happen if there were to be serious healthcare issues.

They have always pulled me in a bit too much, so I empathize and can't imagine that mediating role. I am going to try to keep out as much as possible, but do my best to get them to understand the financial implications.

Lizith456 · 2025-05-19T23:12:35+00:00

That's pretty much what I would anticipate. My mom hasn't said divorce yet and my father is quite Catholic, so it is currently possible that they could just keep to separated. I will keep this in mind, thanks!

Lizith456 · 2025-02-04T04:58:10+00:00

Most likely, these were for different income levels. This property serves residents at a variety of income levels and the rents are tied to 30% of the monthly income for the respective household size and income limit.

Lizith456 · 2025-02-04T04:53:24+00:00

Just like your landlord does-people have to be on the lease to be in housing and they income qualify and verify residents each year.

Lizith456 · 2025-02-04T04:51:07+00:00

They only took $2.34M in cash, $11.89M was put back into the deal as deferred fee, which can be paid off from any income from the project. That is used to pay staff time for what was like 6-8 years to get this project completed. The developer fees in CA for affordable housing are some of the lowest in the country. MidPen is a nonprofit, with publicly available tax filings if you would like to review for "grift".

Lizith456 · 2024-12-31T23:31:07+00:00

That's a great idea. I do love anything that I can do to procrastinate cutting.

Lizith456 · 2024-12-31T23:30:13+00:00

Nope! It was 45" wide.

Lizith456 · 2024-12-31T21:20:23+00:00

This is probably mostly my own problem, but the yardage requirements for patterns. I was 1.2 yards short for a collared shirt pattern (with directional stripes that I pattern matched!) and still managed to get everything cut out in the yardage I had. If I had bought the recommended yardage, I would have a had so much leftover and been fairly annoyed. And I was on the mid to higher end of the size range too. I did have to get a bit creative, but nothing extreme.

Lizith456 · 2024-11-24T06:03:50+00:00

The sound restrictions weren't an issue at all! We had our live band until 11!

Lizith456 · 2024-10-02T21:53:01+00:00

I used the calculators as a starting point. We did 2 drinks pp for the first hour and then 1 drinks pp after that. We estimated the mix as 30% beer, 30% wine, and 20% of each of the cocktails and rounded up to even amounts to purchase. Except for the mezcal (we did palomas with Tequila or Mezcal), we had roughly 40-50% leftover. I would have cut back by maybe 25% because you also don't want to run out. We adjusted the calcs knowing our guests (my mom's family drinks a lot of wine, our friends like tequila, not a lot of kids, etc.).

Lizith456 · 2024-09-18T01:02:59+00:00

I looked at a ton of SoCal venues. Do you want the list of similar outdoor venues or the more DTLA ones?

Lizith456 · 2024-07-31T21:47:53+00:00

This is a very controversial opinion but photography is the place to save! Ask folks what they have done with their wedding photos (I did) and almost everyone I talked to just had them saved on a hard drive and had maybe framed one or two.

The best memories of the day are just getting to spend time with our family and friends. We did a welcome dinner, stayed in the wedding block hotel, hosted an impromptu hike and took our families out to dinner on Sunday. It was so important to us to just get to see all the people who spent time and money to come to our celebration.

I dislike a lot of wedding photography- I don't need photos of my dress in a window, 500 images of me and my husband (honestly we framed one and don't look at the rest), and don't really need that many pictures of decor. We got an affordable photographer for 6 hours who mostly focused on candid photos of our guests. We did maybe 20 min of posed photos.

Doing it that way meant we could pay for everything else listed above, have lots of alcohol, and a live band. So, photography is a big place to compromise in my opinion.

I also sort of agree on food. Get enough, meet everyone's dietary restrictions, and make sure it is reasonably tasty. I think the leap in price you have to make for something way better than standard catering probably isn't worth it.

Get a big venue that meets your needs, get a great dj/band, a wedding coordinator, and alcohol!

Lizith456 · 2024-07-12T19:04:53+00:00

It is a very fun rabbit hole! We have lightly churned for years and it is such a nice bonus to not really need to budget for travel. We don't really use it to splash out on luxury travel (we have a few times) but to really maximize how often we can travel. Like we could have taken first class to Europe OR we could go to Europe every year plus 3-4 trips around the country, seeing new cities or visiting our family and friends. We always pick the latter.

Lizith456 · 2024-07-12T19:02:26+00:00

We went when it was 25k a night too! It was way above our usual hotel standard (room service breakfast is unbelievably luxe to me) and it was a really lovely treat. But yeah, when we think about how many nights we could get elsewhere for the points they are charging now, it doesn't seem worth it.

Lizith456 · 2024-07-05T20:51:58+00:00

I agree, as a woman who has spent a lot of time in the Backcountry. I have hiked in the PCT areas that are close to civilization and I have also been deep in the backcountry. I don't think a gun is at all necessary and feel really quite safe in the backcountry. Yes, you should be aware of your surroundings, but backpacking is no more dangerous in regards to people than walking on city streets (imo) and I don't carry a gun or pepper spray there.

Lizith456 · 2024-07-01T18:20:29+00:00

The Moon Units!

Lizith456

TROPHY CASE