The Guide I Made For The Woman Standing Where I Am

I did not set out to build a financial guide. I set out to survive a Tuesday.

That is what this comes from, if I am honest. Standing in the Checkers aisle doing the kind of maths that has nothing to do with a calculator. Choosing between the thing your child needs and the other thing your child also needs, because right now you can only afford one. Watching them in shoes that are worn through, or socks with the toe gone, and wondering if they feel it. If they feel less than. When there is genuinely nothing you can do about it in that moment because the money just is not there.

I have written about what grocery shopping actually looks like for me, on one income, in South Africa, if any of it sounds familiar.

I am in that place right now, while I am writing this. No income. No partner to take the reins when things get hard, and they are hard most days, more than I would like to admit. There is a debt that follows me to bed at night. I lie there running the same sums for what feels like the hundredth time, knowing the payment is coming and knowing I am not going to make it. That kind of thing does not stay tucked away in a bank account somewhere. It gets into your body. It sits in your chest while you are meant to be asleep.

I talk more on this in my retrenchment series if you’re interested.

And underneath all of that is the guilt. Not being able to give my children the life I want for them. Running low on things in the house before I have even opened the cupboard to check what is actually left.

I have started over so many times now that I have genuinely lost count. After a divorce. After a relationship ending. After decisions that felt right when I made them and turned out to cost far more than I bargained for. Every time, I have had to rebuild on my own, from nothing, with no one handing me a plan or telling me where to start. I wrote about that too, about what building savings as a single mom actually looks like when you are starting from almost nothing.

What I Wished Someone Had Given Me

What I have needed, every single time I have had to start over, is not another list of tips from someone who has never actually stood where I am standing. I have needed someone to sit with me and say, come, I can help you. Without the guilt trip dressed up as advice. Without making me feel worse for being here in the first place.

So I built a financial guide that helps you face your actual numbers, stripped of wishful thinking. A way to work out what is genuinely draining you beyond the obvious: the guilt spending, the reaching for the version of yourself you are still becoming before you can really afford her yet. A proper South African resource directory, the stuff that actually exists here, that you can use quietly without having to explain your situation to anyone. And space to write down, honestly, what you are going to try differently, one month at a time.

If You Are Standing Where I am Standing

Maybe you are not in full crisis today. Maybe you are just tired and stretched, doing your own version of that maths in your own version of the aisle. Or maybe, like me right now, you are properly defeated. No income. No plan B. No real idea what next month looks like.

If that is you, I am not going to sit here and tell you that you have got this, because I do not know that. Honestly, neither do you, not yet. What I will tell you is that defeat does not have to be the end of the story. It might just be the moment right before you try something different, because nothing else has worked so far.