“I can’t just sit here and do nothing”: How one mother is reclaiming her family’s financial future
Katelynne never thought she would have to choose between caring for her children and maintaining a job. But with limited and expensive child care in her Michigan hometown, Katelynne found that she couldn’t commit to a full-time position and also ensure that her kids were taken care of. “It was so frustrating and so hard to find day care,” she describes. “I just thought, ‘You know what? It’s better to spend time with my little people.’”
While child care is just one aspect of Katelynne’s life, acquiring it could serve as a watershed moment to improve her financial health. However, like the millions of people in the US living with low-to-moderate income, Katelynne found that she could only adjust her daily life to account for a lack of day care: not redefine it to better meet her needs.
Unaffordable and inaccessible child care is just one of the many systemic barriers that SaverLife members have shared impact their ability to achieve their financial goals. Not only do these systemic barriers affect the choices that people living with low-to-moderate income make to build financial stability, they also uphold a financial system that doesn’t account for their financial realities and plans.
As a human-centered and data-driven nonprofit and advocacy organization, we at SaverLife recognize that to make change at the systems level, we need to understand the lived experiences and daily realities of individuals first. Katelynne’s optimism and persistence to make the most of her financial situation — despite not having consistent child care — highlights her drive to prevent systemic barriers from defining her family’s future. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” she explains. “We have to start taking the next steps forward.”
Maximizing a tight budget
Katelynne and her two kids live in her childhood home that she’s buying back from her grandfather. She’s excited to share this space with them, and notes that her own height measurements are marked on a wall not far from her children’s. Even so, like any homeowner, maintaining the house on her own has brought new, unexpected challenges: “Last year we replaced the hot water heater, and as soon as that was replaced, I was told that my furnace had a crack in it — right at the beginning of winter. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
When her children aren’t in school, Katelynne keeps them busy with DIY projects like baking and crafting. Since she’s currently not working, she says that inflation and the cost of groceries have had a significant impact on her family’s already tight budget. Rather than cut back on fun activities for her children, she’s pivoted to create opportunities that don’t cost money. “I used to have a more relaxed approach, and I could buy the extra gummies or snack items that the kids wanted for their lunch boxes,” she says. “But now we’re learning how to make things from scratch.” Most recently, they’ve enjoyed baking peanut butter banana bread and building a dollhouse out of cardboard boxes.
Child care isn’t one-size-fits-all
While Katelynne works hard to maintain her family’s budget, she admits that having child care would give her the “breathing room” she needs to move beyond living paycheck to paycheck. When she’s worked in the past, Katelynne could rely on her mother and family to babysit. However, almost all of her relatives have relocated to different states in the last year, leaving her with a small support network. This has made it challenging for Katelynne to find child care that would allow her to work an early-morning or late-night shift and still be home during the day. According to her, it’s almost impossible to find someone who will work late hours or let her children stay at their home overnight. This echoes recent data from the Bipartisan Policy Center that found that, in the three states surveyed, only 2% of child care centers offer services after 6pm and that 0% of centers offer weekend care.
Additionally, one of Katelynne’s children was diagnosed with nonverbal autism and requires close monitoring throughout the day, plus weekly nutrition and speech appointments. Katelynne tried to find a day care that could offer specialized services for her son, but she was turned down by several programs because they couldn’t provide the care she was looking for. To get her children into a program that specializes in autism support, Katelynne would need to pay $5 to $10 per child, per hour. But she can only afford to pay up to $4, and even that’s pushing it. “If you can find somebody, they want $5 an hour per child or more. And the ones that are within my budget, or I could get state help with, typically won’t want my child,” she describes.
Caregiving responsibilities have a lasting impact on working mothers
Katelynne’s challenges with child care are far from unique. According to recent research from the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program, single mothers are the most negatively impacted by caregiving responsibilities when it comes to securing and maintaining a job. In fact, child care is one of the top-ten challenges facing working women: nearly one-third of the women surveyed reported that they are losing jobs, income, advancement opportunities, and building savings due to caregiving responsibilities.
Even if Katelynne did decide to go back to work without relying on day care services, she says that the job would have to accommodate her caregiving duties. In other words, she would require flexible hours and an entirely remote position so that she could work from home. She’d also need a job that doesn’t require a quiet workspace since her kids will be playing and talking in the background. Katelynne has thought about applying for a call center position, but says that it requires eight hours of uninterrupted silence: a reality she can’t promise with a four- and seven-year-old in the house.
The ripple effects of inconsistent care
When Katelynne thinks about her family’s financial future, she feels optimistic about what they’ll be able to achieve through careful budgeting and planning. “I manage my money very well,” she describes. “Every penny is accounted for.” Even so, she feels the effects of inconsistent child care in acute and unexpected ways. In particular, Katelynne recently discovered that, if she doesn’t maintain a job, she won’t qualify for important tax credits. Unlike her tax return in 2021 where she received almost $10,000 in support, this year, Katelynne says that they received next to nothing in caregiving credits: “we got zero back for federal and a couple hundred from the state…I didn’t realize that you had to work in order to get the tax credits, and this is the first year where I’m fully not working.”
Katelynne’s challenges with qualifying for and receiving credits is symptomatic of a larger barrier to tax support. In 2021, 92% of SaverLife members who received the Child Tax Credit reported that it made a difference for their household finances. However, only 54% shared that they received their credit in full and on time. If tax credits and refunds were expanded, and delivered expediently, SaverLife members say that they would be able to better cope with day-to-day expenses and make larger shifts to prioritize saving for their children’s futures. Even so, there are significant barriers such as work requirements that prevent parents like Katelynne from fully accessing them.
The emotional impact of child care barriers
There are very real emotions tied to impacts of systemic barriers, especially when a person is already living paycheck to paycheck. For Katelynne, she says that she finds herself feeling frustrated and stuck by her situation, emotions that are compounded by her concern for giving her son the care and support that he needs to thrive.
She’s also very aware of the stigma tied to people who are unable to work, although she says she doesn’t let it bother her. Katelynne explains: “There’s the stigma where people that are on welfare, or that need help, don’t want to work. It’s not that we don’t want to work. I would love to work! But I would like to know that all of my children’s needs are met, and both of those things don’t seem to be able to happen at once.”
Working toward a brighter future
When asked what financial health looks like to her, Katelynne says that it’s knowing that you can breathe easy when bills are due. As someone who’s constantly shifting money around to ensure that every bill is covered, she sees financial stability as being able to automate the payment process and trust that it will all go through. “Financial health is when you feel like you can breathe…When you can finally just say, ‘It’s in the bank, it will get paid, and we will be okay.’”
To work toward her vision of financial health, Katelynne says that she spends a lot of time thinking about the future that she wants for her children and planning approaches to reach her dream. Part of this involves giving her daughter a weekly allowance and talking to her about how to maintain a savings mindset. She also meets with a small group of friends on a regular basis to discuss how they can cover upcoming bills and build savings. During these meet-ups, they build in time to voice their frustrations with some of the financial challenges they’re dealing with.
When she’s looking for information and recommendations, Katelynne says that she reads SaverLife’s financial content on budgeting and paying down debt. She even takes advantage of the SaverPerks to cut costs on necessities: “There’s an eyeglass [perk], starting at $6 for frames. My daughter just failed her eyeglass exam, so we are going to be looking into that very soon.”
Changing the narrative on financial health and child care
Katelynne’s experiences with securing child care and finding work are essential to larger conversations on how the financial system can adapt to meet the needs of people living paycheck to paycheck. While Katelynne is taking the necessary steps to keep her budget on track and save for her family’s future, she’s encountered multiple systemic barriers that have impacted her ability to succeed — barriers that she can’t tackle on her own.
SaverLife is committed to connecting members like Katelynne with policy makers who can prioritize their realities, pain points, and goals in their own work and enact this lasting change. To create child care and job opportunities that account for the lived experiences of parents like Katelynne, we, as leaders in the financial health space, must advocate for a financial system that centers and destigmatizes their stories. Thanks to the efforts of many people and organizations across the country, including MomsRising and Bipartisan Policy Center, we have seen success expanding child care access for families living with low-to-moderate incomes. Nevertheless, we believe that more can be done to create an economy where everyone can achieve their financial aspirations.
The financial health field can remove child care barriers and their resultant impacts from working families’ financial pathways by:
Endorsing a universal child allowance, similar to the Child Tax Credit, that supports all children regardless of their family’s zip code, income, or circumstance.
Advocating for comprehensive care and education services, including for the workforce that operates outside of business hours or on an inconsistent schedule.
Supporting increased funding to early childhood programs and caregivers to create more robust and inclusive care programs across the country.
Katelynne’s persistence to bring her financial goals to life is a call to all advocates in the financial health space. Her outcome is our outcome: to build a world where everyone can breathe easy knowing that their family and future are taken care of.
Stories can change the balance
This article is part of a larger series Breathing Room: Stories from the financial health journeys of SaverLife members that shares the experiences of people across the country who are working to improve their financial health. It also sheds light on the systemic barriers that are making it more difficult for them to achieve their goals.
SaverLife members and their stories have the insight needed to tip the scales toward an equitable financial system. However, if we collectively want to change the balance, the financial and social sectors must tackle narrative change alongside their advocacy efforts. Together, we need to bring the financial system into full view through people’s individual experiences and highlight how it can be transformed to work with — and not against — people with low-to-moderate incomes.
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