Anna Maria RichardsEven as a feminist, it can be easy to assume that you’ll fall into a conventional pattern of marriage, buying a home, and having a family. This is especially true if you grew up in a similar environment yourself. There’s nothing wrong with following this progression, but if you assume that you can only buy a home, have a family or do anything else with a partner, you can find yourself perpetually on hold, waiting for your real life to start. A better approach is to assess how strongly you want various things and to find ways to accomplish them even if you do them on your own.
Homeownership
While it’s true that it can be easier to qualify for a mortgage with two incomes, if you long to buy a house, there’s no reason that you can’t make a plan to do it on your own. If you live in a high-cost area, you might assume that this will be impossible, but with a growing number of people working from home, this is a great time to move to a lower cost of living place that better suits you and your plans. Even if your current company won’t agree to allowing you to work fully remotely, you may be able to find another company that does, and the shift in your quality of life could be substantial.
You can review a guide about the least expensive states to live in to help you make your choice. Many different factors affect cost of living, and some of them may be more consequential to you than others. You may also want to look at states with a lower cost of living when it comes to real estate investing, which can be a great way to shore up your financial independence. As a landlord, you can draw a passive income from a rental property wherever you are in the world. Buying a home to rent out is one of several ways to build up your financial security as a single woman.
Financial Security
There are a few different steps to financial security. The first is learning to budget and live within your means along with paying off debt. The next is to start building up emergency savings and contributing toward a retirement fund. The final step, and the one that will bring you true financial freedom, is seeking out additional investments, which can include but is not limited to real estate. Setting up an account with an online brokerage is a great first step in starting to invest and finding ways to grow your money over the years and decades ahead.
Having a Family
This may be the most difficult thing to embark upon without a partner. Raising a child can be a challenge even in two-parent families. When you’re a single parent, everything falls on you. However, with a good support system, it is possible, and it’s an option that women are increasingly choosing. It’s worth keeping in mind as well that there are ways of creating family-like units with friends, or you could be a devoted aunt to the children of your siblings. If it’s important to you that there are kids in your life, you don’t have to wait for the right person to come along to make that happen.
Leisure Activities
You may also have been putting off certain leisure activities until you could find someone to do them with you. Some are self-conscious about going to movies alone, and certain activities feel as though they carry a kind of stigma if you’re not doing them with someone else, such as eating in an upscale restaurant, going to a concert, or traveling. However, the bottom line is that it is unlikely that anyone in these places is going to be noticing and speculating on your status as much as you imagine.
Another common concern is safety. Sometimes this doesn’t even come from your own trepidation but from well-meaning family and friends warning you off doing things on your own. To combat both self-consciousness and safety concerns, a great way to begin is by starting slowly. Travel somewhere overnight alone before embarking on a big overseas trip or beach vacation by yourself.
