I wanted to have a baby in my early 20s with my ex-husband and then I came out as gay and we got divorced. I married a woman and she has now decided to leave me for someone she cheated on me with. I’m 34 years old and realizing that I can no longer hang my plans of motherhood on having a partner and while I’m dealing with a pelvic health issue currently (injury based, I fell) I’m currently hoping to start pursing single parenthood by choice sometime at the beginning of 2025.

I make over $80k currently and am applying to jobs that pay more, but my soon to be ex wife and I have never really budgeted - she makes about $30k less than me but our only financial issue has been that we have a fairly expensive mortgage because we bought in 22 when interest rates were high. But other than that, I have no significant personal debt besides a small amount on a single credit card and my car payment, she is the one with student debt but I have none. With our income combined we’ve always been able to pay our bills and have plenty left over to do things we want to do, go on vacations, etc. we just haven’t really saved a whole lot.

I’m realizing that if I want to do this myself I am going to have to budget for it. She will be contributing to the mortgage still for the foreseeable future because we’d like to sell the house before we get legally divorced, so I’m less worried about that, but I know I need to start setting money aside now. Does anyone have any tips for this? Spreadsheet? YNAB?

And how do I do this while our finances are somewhat entangled? She has her own bank account she’s had with a credit union for like 20 years that she puts a small amount into every month, but most of her paycheck gets deposited into our shared account every month. I know step one is to start putting all of her money that’s not her fair share of bills into her own account, but what after that?? Any help appreciated