The Real Cost of Starting a Business as a Mom (It’s Not Money)

By Elize Fisher · April 2026 · WorkingMama® Magazine

FEMALE FOUNDERS

Last week I wrote about the Mom Tax: the second ledger that nobody shows you when you start a business as a mother. The childcare costs that scale with your ambition. The lost hours. The mental load that runs quietly in the background before your business day even begins. I put a number to it. Between R60,000 and R180,000 in the first year, when you count everything honestly.

That was the estimate. This week, we have something better. We have data, and we have your words.

South African mothers who have built businesses responded to the WorkingMama community survey over the past two weeks. They are not theoretical founders. They make leather bags and chocolate, run gyms and Montessori preschools, sell biltong from roadside stalls and dresses from Instagram pages. One started while her baby was still in utero. Another restarted a business she had closed thirteen years before. They are women who decided to build something while raising someone. And they told us what it cost.

Here is what we learned.

You probably spent less than you think you should have

Ask most women what they spent in their first six months and there is a pause. A slight hesitation. As if the real number is somehow embarrassing.

It should not be. More than half of the founders in this community launched their businesses for under R15,000.

This is not a failure of ambition. It is a reality of motherhood and money. Many of these women were not starting lean by choice. They were starting with what they had, while keeping a household running and raising children. They started anyway.

At the other end, some founders spent significantly more: between R60,000 and R100,000, and in a small number of cases, over R100,000. Industry makes a difference. A service-based business with an existing laptop has a very different capital requirement than an ECD centre, a product-based business carrying stock, or a gym.

The point is not what number you hit. The point is whether your number included everything you actually needed.

Where the money actually went

The top five were clear: stock or inventory (63 percent), equipment or tools (54 percent), marketing and advertising (51 percent), software and subscriptions (49 percent), and logo and branding (43 percent). Website or online store followed at 37 percent. Courses or coaching at 34 percent. Business registration and home office setup at around 31 percent.

Only 17 percent of respondents flagged additional childcare as a first-six-months expenditure. But that number does not tell the full story.

The cost that catch founders off guard are rarely on anyone's checklist

The costs that surprised everyone

We asked founders to name their single biggest unexpected cost. Not the category. The specific thing. The answers were precise and, in several cases, breathtaking.

Packaging came up repeatedly. Women who had not built it into their pricing found themselves absorbing it month after month, out of pocket, before they could recalculate.

"I was so focused on my products. And then my husband reminded me that the packaging is the first thing people see when they purchase. I had to invest out of pocket first, before I could calculate it into my product price."

Tax arrived like a stranger for many. Specifically, provisional tax: the reality that as a business owner you submit and pay twice a year, and that means an accountant twice a year too.

"I literally did not know about provisional tax. Paying the accountant twice a year was a big unexpected cost."

Beyond that, the surprises showed the range: a broken shop front window at R18,000. Import duties on stock sourced internationally. Fuel costs absorbed over months of driving between cities to tend a beekeeping operation, baby in the car seat, working quickly before dark.

The childcare reality

When asked directly whether childcare costs increased when they started their businesses, 43 percent said they managed childcare themselves at no additional cost. A further 31 percent said their costs stayed the same. Nearly three quarters did not record childcare as a financial increase. And yet the qualitative responses told a different story entirely.

"Finding a balance. My kids come first, but I also have clients I need to do work for, because without them I don't have an income to support my kids."

And it does not appear anywhere in a startup budget.

Of the founders whose costs did increase, the jumps were significant. One hired an au pair at R6,000 per month. Another said her childcare costs doubled. A third paid the City of Cape Town nearly R30,000 for consent-of-use approval on her rented property, just to legally operate her early childhood development centre. That was the cost she had never seen coming.

The number nobody budgets for

If there is a single thing this dataset tells us, it is this. The costs that hurt most are not the ones you can plan for.

We asked founders what they wished someone had told them before they started. The responses did not circle back to money. They circled back to something else entirely.

"The real cost is measured in family time lost due to being solely responsible for your business."

"The cost is not only money. It is also emotional, energy, mental health, physical health."

"Motherhood and business at the same time is a big cost beyond currency. It is mental and emotional, not just financial."

"Starting a business as a mother requires double the strength, financially and emotionally. You invest money, but you also sacrifice time, comfort, and rest. But in the end, it is all worth it for your child."

Three things worth taking from this

Most startup advice ends with a budget template. This one ends differently.

If you are planning to start: include packaging as a line item from the beginning. Find an accountant before month three, not after month twelve. Add at least 20 percent to whatever you think you will spend, and put that buffer somewhere you will not touch it until you need it.

If you are already in it: you are probably carrying more than you budgeted for, in more ways than one. That is not a sign that you did it wrong. It is a sign that you are doing it honestly, in conditions that were never designed with you in mind.

And if you started for under R5,000 and you are still going: that is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.