My Family Of 5 Lives On $90,000 A Year In Dallas, And Its A Struggle Financially

Ask any American with young children what their No. 1 household expense is, and youll hear the same answer almost every time: child care. Each family finds its own way to manage. Some parents are pushed out of the workforce. Others work jobs they wouldnt take otherwise or hold down multiple jobs in order to meet their families needs.

To show how real families are navigating this child care challenge, HuffPost is profiling parents around the country. If youd like to be featured in an installment, email us at parents@huffpost.com.

Name: Rachael Gomez

Age: 34

Occupation: Texas sales manager for a group of small craft distilleries

Location: Dallas area

Childrens ages: 7 months, 2 years and 9 years (oldest child is Gomezs stepson)

Annual household income: $90,000

Weekly take-home pay: $1,500

Child care costs: $200 per month

Work arrangements: Gomez and her husband, Jesus, met through work. How we met was in the [restaurant] industry. Now, due to child care issues, he actually is a stay-at-home dad. He has been for about two years now.

When I was pregnant with Aly Rose, our 2-year-old, his son did not live with us full-time. We had him on the weekends. And at the time, he was working at a restaurant. The hours were crazy. We knew that we werent going to be able to swing caring for children. So he quit working in restaurants and started working for a wine distributor that offered a lot more flexibility.

We tried to make it work with our schedules. But he ended up getting a new boss that just made his schedule a lot more demanding, and so our schedules really didnt align. We put Aly Rose on six to eight different waiting lists for day cares before she was born, and then a couple after. Ive only even gotten a call from two of those places.

Aly Rose is now 2 and a half. She was born in July 2021. She ended up in the NICU for three weeks, unexpectedly, and so we brought her home the beginning of August. We tried to make it work schedule-wise until he ended up quitting his job December 1, 2021. My parents actually came down and watched the kids for three weeks prior, just because it really wasnt working like we hoped. We had looked at other day cares, and any other option that we could at the time, before we made the decision for him to quit his job: Angies List, Care.com. People didnt have availability for like seven to eight months. There were two [day cares] that said that they were going to have openings within six months. But they were 3.1-star, 2.3-star and they were the best-rated in the area. We thought, do we really want our kids to have a 3.1-star life? Thats almost failing. He had been managing people for so long, and he was kind of tired of it. Im very career-driven, as well as family-driven. He gave me the option for him to stay home.

To go from two pretty decent incomes to literally cutting our income in half was hard. We tried to mentally justify it with, Oh, but look how much were saving on day care and all of this, but at the end of the day, youre still at a loss. Its a blessing now, because his son has some special needs, he has autism. Now hes able to live with us full-time, and Jesus has more time that he can dedicate to taking him to appointments, managing his care from home as well as taking care of the kids. Its been a little over two years. I have a higher-paying job, but its still not enough to offset him having no income.

My employer covers my health insurance, but the plan that they offer for my dependents and spouse is like $1,200 a month. So we chose to get a plan through the marketplace for his use and the kids. Its not much cheaper. It saves us a couple hundred a month, which, at this point, anything helps.

The thing about my job is, its pretty flexible. I typically have some calls in the morning and some admin stuff that I do, starting at nine. I usually have a couple of free hours in the middle of the day. Then I leave my house to go out to visit accounts starting around four oclock, and theres nights I dont get home till midnight.

Even when I get home early, hes put three kids to bed. The only thing he has energy for is to sit on the couch. We open a bottle of wine. We just veg out for an hour until we both say, OK, lets pry our eyes away [from the TV] and go to sleep because were going to be up in two hours.

Gomez anticipates that Jesus will return to the workforce once all their children are in school, about five years from now. He has his associates degree and hes talked about getting his bachelors degree in an online program, but theres just no time. Every time we try to prioritize something, even just as small as going to the gym if I have a call in the morning, by the time that he wakes up to go to the gym, then both babies are up. So hes probably going to put off going back to school at least for another two or three years. 

Child care plan: We did start Aly Rose in a mothers day out program in January of this year. It runs two days a week, five hours a day. Luckily, its right down the street from our house and gives Jesus a little bit of relief. Its $200 a month, which is OK, in my mind. Pretty affordable compared to other day cares. But it is a very short window of time. He drops her off after he drops his son off at school and picks her up before he picks him up, but it gets him a good four and a half hours of one-baby time.

We tried to [drive for] DoorDash or Uber Eats [to make] enough money to pay for her day care. If I get home and theres a bonus program on DoorDash, Ill go out and drive for DoorDash for three or four hours. 

The family is looking at preschools for Aly Rose next year, but options are limited. Their income is too high for subsidized programs, and other programs are located far from home and offer only a few hours of care several days per week. They plan next year to send their younger daughter to the same mothers day out program, which is housed in a church and runs on a school calendar. Its for babies who are at least 1 year old and walking. 

Both of us are happy that weve made it work. Its a struggle financially, and I mean, Im sure it will be forever, with the cost of everything going up. Yesterday he said, I need adult time, I caught myself talking to your cousin in a baby voice. And I leave the city of Dallas and I work out of market throughout the rest of the state one to two weeks a month. So hes here full-time. You couldnt pay me money to stay home with with my kids. Theyre great kids, but I just need that adult interaction. There werent really a whole lot of good choices.

What would help their family: Theres no one mandating day care pay, and those are the people that are caring the hardest for our children. Not just educating them, but literally cleaning up after them and carrying them around and helping to potty-train them and do all of the things that parents are trying to do, but for 12 bucks an hour. Day care pay regulations would be super helpful.

Also, theres no mandated parental leave, which is insane. I had six weeks with both children, and with Aly Rose I only had two weeks of maternity leave. The rest of it was short-term disability, meaning I didnt even get full pay. Were not planning on having any more children because we cant financially thats another two years before Jesus can go back to work and we can try to pay off some debt weve accrued over the last few years.

I went back to work both times before I had my six-week checkup. I hadnt been medically cleared to lift things, and I had to go back to work. Having a little more time, parents have the ability to bond with their kids. In our case, we thought we could make child care work between the two of us. [Paid leave] would have given us a little more more leeway and breathing room to figure out a different plan. But I had already gone back to work, and there was no spare time to figure out a plan B or C.

I might not have it all, but I have it better than a lot of people. OK, yes, weve racked up a lot of debt. And yes, it sucks that my husband is stuck at home with the kids all day and we dont have that income and were not able to save money. Its always hard for me to to be like, I want subsidized anything, because we have it pretty good. Do we need help? We do need child care. We both slept an hour and a half last night with a sick kid, [and] our 2-year-old doesnt sleep ever. If we got a day care facility for the kids, we could have taken a nap this morning. Been refreshed enough to actually care for our children, instead of, to be really honest, theyre probably going to end up in front of Ms. Rachel this evening, because were gonna be too worn out to do anything, and I wont be home till midnight.