Emma Johnson built Wealthysinglemommy.com, the site she has grown into what she calls the largest single-mom community in the world, from the exact spot many of our readers know well: a kitchen table, a freelance career, and no second income coming. Two bestselling books, a podcast, and a nonprofit followed. None of it started with capital. It started with a question she could not find answered anywhere.
Her solo-mom status, stated plainly: Johnson raised her two children on her own after her marriage ended in 2009, when she had a toddler at home and was pregnant with her second child.
Before
Johnson was a business journalist in New York, married in 2005 and freelancing for national outlets. When the marriage ended in 2009, she landed in a position she has described in three words that need no dressing up: broke, pregnant, alone. The freelance checks that had been one of two incomes were suddenly the whole budget, with a toddler in the apartment and a baby on the way.
She did what a journalist does and went looking for information. What she found was written for a woman she did not recognize: a victim to be pitied, a budget to be shrunk, a life to be endured until the kids grew up. Nothing addressed the woman who planned to raise her income and her children at the same time.
The turn
In August 2012 she started writing that resource herself and called it Wealthysinglemommy.com. The name was the thesis. Single motherhood and money were going to appear in the same sentence, on purpose, with no apology between them. Tens of thousands of women a month were soon visiting, commenting, and asking the money, career, and dating questions no one else would print.
The build
The blog became a platform, and the platform became a body of work with real milestones behind it:
- 2012: Wealthysinglemommy.com launches and grows into what Johnson describes as the largest single-mom community in the world (her story, in her words).
- 2017: Penguin publishes The Kickass Single Mom, which hit the number one spot on Amazon’s bestseller list and picked up coverage in more than 150 media outlets (Penguin Random House).
- 2024: Sourcebooks publishes The 50/50 Solution, her research-backed case that equally shared parenting serves moms, dads, and kids best after a split (Sourcebooks, March 2024).
Along the way she has hosted the Like a Mother podcast, founded the nonprofit Moms for Equal Parenting, and testified in support of shared parenting at the United Nations, at Google, before state legislatures, and to a Scottish Parliament working group (career background). Her own survey of 2,279 single moms found that those with 50/50 co-parenting schedules earn more than those without them (survey findings).
Two threads run through everything she publishes. First: earn first, cut second. A tighter budget has a floor, while earning has no ceiling. Second: calibrate your lifestyle to now. Not to the married years, and not to a someday when things settle. The math of this month is the math that counts.
There is a third thread, quieter but everywhere in her work: single moms come to business with training most founders pay for. Running a one-adult household means multitasking, budget discipline, fast decisions, and recovery from bad weeks, because there is no one else to hand the problem to. Johnson treats that as a resume, and thousands of women in her community have built freelance careers and small businesses on the strength of it.
“Why should it be your ex’s responsibility to give you a lifestyle that you yourself cannot afford?”
Emma Johnson, The Kickass Single Mom (source)
That line lands hard, and she means it to. Johnson has argued, controversially, that chasing support payments can keep a woman tethered to an arrangement that costs more than the checks bring in. Whatever you decide on that question for your own family, the stance underneath is the useful part: build an income that answers to you. It is the same stance that turned her broke year into a launch year, and it is the reason her site reads like a playbook instead of a support group.
What you can take from this
- Earn first, cut second. Trimming a one-income budget matters, and our Money toolkit walks you through it, but Johnson’s arc shows where the leverage sits. One new client, one raise, or one offer can move your month more than twenty small cuts.
- The resource you cannot find is a business plan. Johnson needed a money site for ambitious single moms. It did not exist, so the audience became hers. If you keep searching for something and coming up empty, you may be looking at your first product. The Business toolkit helps you scope it inside the hours you have.
- Presence and ambition are teammates. The core of her message is that mothers do not have to choose between professional success and an engaged family life. Plan the good weekend with the same intention you give the workweek. The Fun with Kids toolkit exists for exactly that.
More stories, more tools
Emma Johnson’s story is one of a growing shelf. Read the rest on our Stories of Success page, and join the weekly SoloMom email from the homepage to get each new story in your inbox with the tools to use it.
Verification note: solo-mom status, business facts, and the quote above were checked against the linked sources in July 2026. Quotes are reproduced verbatim.
