How I Became Financially Stable After Having a Kid When I Wasn’t Financially Ready
It was 2:17 a.m. in 2019, and I was sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor of my 500-square-foot apartment, holding a teething 10-month-old on my lap and counting out loose change from my car cupholder. My bank app said $12.78 left after rent that month, and the last pack of size 3 diapers I’d split with my sister was down to three. I’d already skipped two lunches that week to cover gas for my 1998 Civic, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d bought something for myself that wasn’t baby-related. I got pregnant at 21, unplanned, and my partner left before my daughter was born. I moved into that apartment with $400 and a duffel bag of clothes, and for the first three months, I was too proud and too scared to ask for help.
The turning point was a rainy Tuesday on my way to my coffee shop shift. My daughter had a fever, I needed baby Tylenol, and I was $4 short on gas to get to work. I stood at the pump for 10 minutes before I worked up the nerve to ask the attendant for help. He handed me a five dollar bill and told me not to worry about paying him back, but I sat in my car and cried for 15 minutes after that. I realized my pride was keeping me stuck, not protecting me. That night after my daughter fell asleep, I sat down with a spiral notebook and made a list of every public resource I might actually qualify for.
I’d always thought food banks and WIC and childcare subsidies were for people “worse off” than me, but I checked the income limits and qualified for every single thing I wrote down. WIC covered all my daughter’s milk, formula, and produce. The state childcare subsidy cut my weekly childcare cost from $180 to $25. The local food bank at my church gave out free diapers and hygiene products every other Wednesday. Applying for everything took three hours online, and that first month, it saved me $320 I would have otherwise scrambled to scrape together. That $320 gave me enough breathing room to start planning instead of just surviving.
Almost everyone I talked to back then told me the same thing: quit your part-time jobs and go to college full time, that’s the only way out. But quitting my two jobs (coffee shop 20 hours a week, office cleaning 12 hours on weekends) would have meant taking out at least $10,000 in loans just to cover rent and groceries, and I couldn’t risk being five years down the line with a degree and tens of thousands in debt and a kid to feed. Instead, I looked into my community college’s low-income tuition waiver program, which erased all tuition costs for people under my income level. I signed up for just one class a semester.
One class a semester meant I never had to cut back on work hours, my sister could still watch my daughter for free before her night shift, and I never had to take out a dollar of student loans. It took me six years to get my associate’s degree instead of two, but I graduated with zero debt, and I never missed my daughter’s bedtime or her first toddler steps because I was too busy studying full time. That slow, steady path was the right one for us, even if it wasn’t the “impressive” one everyone expected.
Next, I turned something I already had into extra cash without adding 40 extra hours a week to my plate. My daughter outgrew clothes so fast, and I’d gotten three big garbage bags of barely worn hand-me-downs from a cousin. I posted a few pieces on Facebook Marketplace for $5 each, and they all sold in 24 hours. I started stopping by the local thrift store once a week on my way home from work, picking up name brand kids clothes in good shape for $1 or $2, then flipping them for $10 to $20. It only took 20 to 30 minutes a night after my daughter fell asleep to take photos and answer messages. I made $100 to $150 a month, which covered gas, birthday party gifts for classmates, and any unexpected small costs that popped up. I didn’t have to rearrange my whole life to get that extra buffer.
I also swapped childcare with my neighbor down the hall, another single mom working night shifts at a local bar. I watched her two kids three nights a week while she worked, and she watched my daughter every Saturday morning so I could pick up extra cleaning shifts. No money changed hands, and we both got more work hours without paying for extra childcare, which saved me another $200 a month. Small swaps like that don’t make the news, but they make a huge difference when every dollar counts.
Today, I work full time as an admin assistant at a local elementary school. We moved to a two-bedroom apartment last year, and we have a savings account with $7,000 in it. That’s not enough to buy a house or take a fancy vacation, but it’s enough that if the car needs new brakes or my daughter gets sick, I don’t have to count change out of my cupholder. I still buy almost all of my daughter’s clothes secondhand, and I still flip a few pieces a month for extra spending money.
Some days I still worry about money, and I know one big emergency could knock me back a lot. I didn’t fix everything all at once, and I’m not where I thought I’d be when I was a kid myself. But right now, we have enough. We don’t go to bed hungry, we have a warm place to live, and I can buy my daughter the unicorn birthday cake she asked for without checking my bank balance three times first. That’s what stability looks like for me, right now. It’s enough.
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