#5: From Two Incomes to One: What Changed and What I Learned

After suddenly losing my husband in 2023, I found myself in unfamiliar territory—grieving, overwhelmed, and managing finances completely alone for the first time. In this deeply personal episode of Budget Divas, I share what that season looked like: unopened mail, panic attacks, emotional spending, and learning how to take slow, gentle steps toward financial stability.

Whether you’re navigating grief, a job loss, divorce, or just trying to find your footing on one income, this episode offers a dose of compassion, honesty, and hope.

Takeaways from this episode:

• Why it’s okay to press pause on budgeting when your world falls apart
• The importance of a “grief cushion” in your budget
• How to do a gentle audit of your spending without shame
• Tips for setting up a simple financial system when your brain is in a fog
• What a “money date” with yourself can do for healing and clarity
• Why emotional safety matters before spreadsheet strategy

You don’t have to do it all. Just start with one bill, one breath, one step.

Transcript

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of the Budget Divas podcast. I'm your host Jen Trinidad. And if this is your first time here, first of all, I want to give you a big hug because you have walked into a space where bougie meets budget, where we talk about money, mystery shopping, grief, side hustles and healing. And not the kind of healing you get from slapping cucumber slices on your face. I'm talking deep, soul-shaking, sometimes ugly cry on the floor type of healing. 

In today's episode, it's one that I need to record because this is my new normal. This is my new reality and I want to talk about it. If you've ever gone from two incomes to one, whether through divorce, separation, job loss, or losing your person,

You already know that financial shock doesn't wait. It comes fast, it hits hard, and sometimes it comes wrapped in panic, fear, and that terrifying question, how am I supposed to do this alone? This is the episode, Bills, Paperwork, and Panic Attacks, Facing My Finances Alone for the First Time.

So just to rewind the tape a bit, it's November, 2023. That was the month my entire life flipped upside down. Alden, my husband, my best friend, my partner in life and spreadsheets passed away suddenly. And suddenly I wasn't grieving the man I loved. I was also grieving the life we had built together, the plans we made. And yes,

Even the budgeting system we use to crush our goals. Now, if you know Alden, you know, he is not a spreadsheet person at all. He would rather go to the dentist and have all of his teeth pulled out than to do a spreadsheet. I am the accounting person. love everything spreadsheets, everything in Excel, list making, you name it, putting all things together. And suddenly it was like, everything that I had planned in my spreadsheet for the next five years just suddenly went down the drain. All of our goals. It wasn't just losing a person, it was also losing a co-pilot.

I remember the first week after he passed, I couldn't even open the mail. I'd walk past a growing stack of envelopes and feel my chest tighten. Or sometimes I wouldn't even go to the mailbox. And by the time I went to the mailbox to grab the mail, it was full. It was overflowing. That's how much I just did not want to see his name on the envelopes.

The paper itself seemed like it was screaming at me, you're behind, you're failing, and you can't do this alone. I remember I had full on panic attacks, my heart was racing, my hands were shaking, I had shortness of breath. I couldn't even look at our joint bank account without crying. I couldn't even log in. It was like a ghost lived in there. His name was on everything, and the silence on the other end of the budgeting meeting.

Now, Alden and I weren't living like the Kardashians, but we had a rhythm. Two incomes meant a cushion. One income that meant every dollar suddenly mattered more than ever. We had just bought this house in April of 2023, just a few months before. And now I was going from two incomes to one. I do want to say though that

We were prepared. When we first started getting out of debt, we did the Dave Ramsey plan and I am so grateful for Dave Ramsey saying that even before you do baby step number one, which is to save $1,000 for a quick emergency fund, you need to get life insurance. And that's what we did. We got life insurance on each other just in case the unthinkable happens.

And the unthinkable did happen and I am so grateful because knowing that I had that money for just in case emergencies or to help me along for the next 10 years really made a difference. But that didn't mean that I could just spend the money like crazy or keep carrying on and not worrying about my budget.

I still needed to think about my budget and I still needed to face the reality that I was on a single income now.

Some of the things that changed overnight was I knew that my grocery budget had to shrink. And it was going to shrink because now we were going from two person household to one. And this was when Brandon was still in college. So at the time it was just me. I had to cancel subscriptions that he had. So I had to go through

All of his transactions, log into his account and cancel those subscriptions. I went from saving aggressively for retirement to just trying to survive. I could not afford to freeze, but I also could not afford to move too fast and make mistakes. One of the biggest shocks for me was the loneliness in financial decision-making.

Now I told you earlier that Alton wasn't the type of person who liked to have these budgeting meetings, but he was genuinely interested in knowing where our money went. And I would put the budget together on a spreadsheet and just have him look over it just so he knew what was going on with our finances, how much money we had for the month to spend on date nights or how much fun money, because we have our own fun money category, each of us had to spend individually. What we wanted to do to renovate our new home or buy things for our new home. And now I didn't have anyone to talk about those decisions with. I had to make the decisions alone and it was always so nice even if we didn't agree on how to spend the money for him to tell me, you know what, we shouldn't be spending the money on that thing right now. Let's save a little bit more until we have enough in the account and then we can start looking at it. So just having his logical brain tell me that because I'm a very, very emotional spender. Even though I'm the budget diva, I am the emotional spender.

It was nice having that. So no one to brainstorm with at 9pm or how we cashflow the car repair. It was all on me. There was no one to double check the numbers with.

So if you're there facing your finances alone for the first time, this is what I want you to hear. Don't start with the numbers. Start with the nervous system because budgeting and money is emotional. Seriously, because before I even opened a spreadsheet or made a single cut to the budget, I had to calm my body. During this time, since November, 2023, to I wanna say all of 2024, my body was just in survival mode and it didn't know how to calm down. And it was just trying to keep my head above water and to not let myself drown. So I knew that before even like looking at the spreadsheet and making decisions about money, I just had to learn how to calm my body.

I'd put on chill lo-fi sounds, ocean sounds, sitting on the couch. Sometimes I'd even go to the nearest coffee place and put on headphones. I just needed a different type of space to calm my mind and calm my body because I knew if I stayed in this house thinking about budgeting and looking at the budget and making financial decisions. It just wouldn't help. All of the memories that came with this house would come flooding in and I would be making emotional decisions.

Sometimes late at night when I felt like it, I would light a candle and then just breathe five seconds in, five seconds out. And I tell myself, you're safe, you're okay. One thing at a time. And that was one thing that was super important to me. I knew that I just needed to feel safe. And I really felt safe with Alden. And now that I didn't have him, I really didn't know who to turn to. Yes, I had my friends. Yes, I had my family. But it wasn't my person. I just wanted my person to make me feel safe.

Then I created what I call my permission list. On it I wrote, I give myself permission to grieve. I give myself permission to not have it all figured out right now. And I give myself permission to make slow decisions. Once I felt calm enough to face the facts, I opened one bill, just one. And that was my rule, one thing at a time.

If you're dealing with grief or some kind of trauma, it's easy to get caught up in the fog. And I really did get caught up in the financial fog. So here are some real deal steps that helped me when I was deep in that financial fog. One, the giant gentle.

One, the gentle audit. Go through your last 30 days of spending with curiosity, not criticism. I literally said out loud, hey, DoorDash. Yep, I remember that breakdown. I laughed, I cried, but I didn't shame myself. Number two, the reset budget. Instead of cutting everything, I made a survival budget. And I'm so grateful that I already had a budget established prior to all of this because in that budget, I made a block of what do I absolutely need to pay for to keep my lights on, to just keep the everyday daily expenses and the daily activities going. So that included my mortgage, my utilities, food, transportation and sometimes therapy, which I'll get into in a later episode, but also most importantly, a grief cushion, which I mentioned in the episode before this that I have a just because category because sometimes I need takeout and not judgment. Number three, the don't do it alone plan. I called a friend. I had a few friends that I would call on a regular basis just because I needed to cry. Or I didn't want to talk about Alden, I just wanted to hear what was going on in their life to help me feel a little bit more normal. And so, of course they would ask how I'm doing, but I would turn it around back on them, like, hey, what's going on with you? Like, tell me something new that's going on. How are your kids? How's your health, how's your recent vacation, what's going on, just so I could feel like I had some normalcy in my life.

I also had coaches. I had coaches who would tell me that I needed to put my business on hold and I didn't want to because I wanted to keep going. But guys, I couldn't even pick up the microphone to tell this story without crying. I couldn't even think about it. I couldn't even write it down on a piece of paper or on my computer on what I wanted to talk about. It was even hard just to write in my daily journal all the things that I was feeling because I just did not want to do it. And so one of my coaches, he told me, you need to put everything on hold. And that's exactly what I did. I still had my free budget divas resources out there, but I wasn't creating new content. I wasn't doing anything to help my business grow. And even though it did feel a little crappy at the time, I'm so glad that I did put it on hold because I needed to heal. I needed to sit in my grief, really cry all the time about it and let my heart and my brain heal. And I needed to feel safe again.

I called friends from church and sometimes you need that. You need people who won't flinch when you say, I don't know how to adult today. And that's okay. I also had a money date with myself once I was able to pull myself together and I would not do this at home because it was just too hard. So I would go to the nearest
cafe down the street and I would have a money date with myself. I would buy myself a coffee, maybe get some snacks or food, take my computer with me and then really just write down everything that I wanted to do with money or everything that I needed to do at that time to make me feel safe. So even if it's just spending 30 minutes looking at your budget or planning for money, that's called showing up. No shame, no pressure, just checking in. Sometimes this made me cry. Sometimes I got off track, but I was doing all the things just to keep showing up. And my mantra back then was one day at a time. Just take it one day at a time.

No need to worry about tomorrow. No need to worry about next week. What do I want to do today?

Let me just say this loud and clear. Grief messes with your brain and I never really understood this until this tragedy happened to me. I would forget to pay things and thank God that I had most of my bills on auto pay ⁓ because if I didn't, you know, I would probably be getting

Mail that's saying, where is a payment for your mortgage? Where is a payment for your electric bill? Where is a payment for your credit card bill?

Not that I didn't want to pay it, but I had grief brain and I never really understood what grief brain was until a friend who went through a similar situation many years ago. She had lost her husband told me about grief brain and it made me feel so much better to know that I wasn't losing my mind. I was just having grief brain and it was real.

And so my brain was fried, trauma fog kicked in. And so I created what I call kind of like a crisis command center. And it was just a bunch of papers, you know, putting together in a binder called life after Alden. I had my logins, had bills, had copies of death certificates, insurance info.

passwords, everything. It wasn't pretty. I did not like doing it, but I needed to because if I had grief on my brain, there was somewhere that I just needed to turn to in case I needed all those documents. And when you're filing for things like life insurance or closing bank accounts or trying to remove your spouse from your medical plan. You need to have this in place. And I'm so glad that I just kept a command center of these are where my papers and my documents are. And I didn't have to look every which way for it.

So thank goodness that I also had automatic bill payments because if I didn't, I don't know what would have happened. And this was something that we had established early on before everything happened. Even if it was just for the minimum amount paid, make sure that you have auto pay turned on.

So now in 2025, almost two years later, here's what I want you to know. Budgeting looks so different now. I am not trying to build an empire today. I'm just trying to survive one day at a time, but also with style. I still get my lashes done and honestly, going to my lash girl every couple of weeks is a form of therapy. She is like amazing. I still use mystery shopping to cover meals or groceries. I track every single penny that I spend. Not because I want to be frugal, but because I really want to understand where is my money going? What am I feeling in this moment? Why did I spend so much on Amazon this month? Why did I spend so much on groceries this month?

So that I can just be better the next month. But now, I also do it with more grace. Some days, I'm a spreadsheet queen. And other days, I cry watching old videos and honestly forget to eat lunch, but that's real. And through it all, I just tell myself, progress, not perfection.

So let me just close with this. If you're facing your finances alone for the first time, just hear me that you're not broken. You're not a failure and you're not alone. Cause like I said earlier, money is super emotional and I am an emotional spender. I know that when my Amazon account starts getting really high and really expensive and I start getting more boxes in the mail than I need then I know something is wrong. I know that when my grocery bill goes from $400 a month to $800 a month or even $1,000 a month, something is wrong. so money is emotional and just take it one day at a time to really understand where your finances are coming from so that you can just do better the next month and give yourself a lot of grace because you are going through trauma, grief, or trying to find your new normal.

When you've been cracked wide open by grief, the last thing you need is a lecture on cutting lattes. What you need is compassion, clarity, and a little bit of sass. And that is what we do here at Budget Divas. So give yourself grace, start with one bill, light the candle, take a deep breath, then take the next right step.

Well, that's all I have to say for today's episode. If this resonated with you, do me a favor. Take a screenshot. Tag me at budgetdivas.

That's all for today's episode. If this resonated with you, please share this with a friend, share this with your neighbor, share this with someone that you know needs to hear about grief and know that just grief is just normal. Let's break the shame around financial trauma and start building something new together. And remember, even on your worst budgeting day, you are still a diva and divas definitely bounce back. So until the next episode, stay soft, stay strong, and stay bougie on a budget.