What the Tradwife Regret Videos Made Me Realise About Financial Independence
Financial independence for women, married or not, is the most important thing we need to strive for, and you can see why all over social media right now; just open TikTok and there will be a video of a tradwife telling you she made a mistake. When I watch them, I feel for them. I genuinely feel sad for them because I know what it’s like to struggle, to be left with nothing, to start over, to be the only one who cares about your children’s well-being, and to sit there and ask yourself, “What do I do now?” I hurt for them.
I’ve been in relationships since my teens, and somewhere near the end of my thirties it finally landed that I have always, always carried myself. I never needed a man to look after me; I wanted one, and yes, there’s a difference, but I grew up believing that’s just what you do: you find someone, you get married, and you get looked after, because that’s what we saw all around us. Our parents have been married forty or fifty years, and you look at that and wonder why you can’t have it too, and it took me a long time to accept that in some cases the reason they’re still together is that the woman had nowhere else to go.
I was never a tradwife in the sense of staying home with the kids and never working; I worked my whole life, but it was always the dream in some way. I remember the conversations with colleagues about regretting not being home with my children or not being there when they get home from school and about why I miss them, but it never became my reality. Even so, I wasn’t financially independent, because when you’re in a relationship, you consult your partner and you make plans together, and I didn’t think to save a little pot of my own; that only came later. So even as a full-time working mom, I gave most of myself to the relationship, and it always ended with me on the raw end.
My marriage was under Muslim law, back before it was recognised in South Africa, and it ended about ten years ago. A couple of years after that, I was living in my own place, and money was tight; I won’t pretend it wasn’t, but I’d picked up some extra income teaching online with my TEFL, and I was coping. I was making it on my own. Then I went back into a relationship and, bit by bit and without ever really deciding to, my independence and my financial freedom slipped away, and I was doing most of the giving and getting very little back. By the time I left, years later, I had nothing, and somewhere in that I realised I didn’t need what was being offered; I didn’t even want it, because it wasn’t meeting a single need I had and it had made me feel small.
And I think this is the part we don’t say enough: that it isn’t only about the money. It’s so important for women to heal, to deal with our trauma, and to love ourselves, because going from one relationship straight into the next tends to make us small, with the approval of the next partner becoming the whole focus so that we won’t get hurt again, and in doing that we ignore red flags that were so blatant from the very beginning, and the cycle carries on. I’ve written about the boundaries I had to learn the hard way if any of that sounds familiar. That’s why I believe we have to work on ourselves first, and not only mentally and emotionally but also financially.
And if you want somewhere to start, start small, with whatever your capacity allows. Get your TEFL certification; it’s how I started teaching online, and it’s easier than you think, and some organisations offer placement support. Open a small savings account and put a few hundred rand away every month if you can, and I’ve written about what building savings as a single mom actually looks like when you’re starting from almost nothing. Start doing the things you love—crafting, knitting, pottery, whatever that looks like for you—and sell it on Facebook Marketplace, or take out your old clothes and sell them on Yaga, whatever it looks like; just start somewhere. And if you’d like somewhere to work through your own numbers, I made a financial guide for exactly that.
I’m only saying this because I’m a single mom now, building my life from the bottom again, and if I’d known ten years ago what I know today, I’d be in a much better place. I don’t want to tell anyone I told you so; I just want us to sit with it for a minute, because wanting someone in your life and needing them aren’t the same thing.
Still figuring out the money side of starting over?
I didn’t build The Honest Reset from theory; I built it from standing in the Checkers aisle doing maths that had nothing to do with a calculator. It’s a 38-page guide for facing your actual numbers, stripped of guilt and wishful thinking.
Read the full story behind it here: The Guide I Made For The Woman Standing Where I Am