Mom Who Pays $70k A Year For Childcare Explains How She & Her Husband Afford It –'He Is A Blue Collar Worker'
“I always get asked how I afford it … It’s a struggle.”
Krakenimages.com | Shutterstock.com In a TikTok post, Paige Turner explained how her suburban family struggles to afford childcare amid rising costs across the country.
Especially living in Massachusetts with four children, where childcare is grossly unaffordable, budgeting has only grown more difficult — even for her family that makes a combined income of over $200K.
“Our childcare costs are incredibly expensive. It is very difficult to afford childcare here in Massachusetts … We’re constantly talking about how we’re going to budget for it.”
The mom revealed her family pays $70K for childcare, explaining, ‘It’s not easy.’
“We live in Massachusetts, which has a very high cost of living area, which means our salaries are relative to that cost of living,” Turner explained. “We also have the highest childcare cost in the country.”
Working remotely and making over $100K a year, Turner said she’s already in a very privileged position compared to a lot of other families across the country. However, it isn’t her salary, benefits, or 10 years of experience that allows them the luxury of childcare for their kids.
Instead, it’s her husband’s job. More specifically, it's the overtime he works to budget for their yearly $70K childcare bill. “My husband is a blue-collar worker,” she said. “He’s a lineman, which means he fixes electricity on utility poles. It is a very dangerous job. He gets paid a base salary and then everything over that is hourly overtime. Most of his pay comes from overtime.”
Despite making more than $200K combined, Turner said they spend a lot of time budgeting for childcare.
Turner works from home, but she and her husband decided to put their children in childcare because it's unrealistic to expect remote employees to also take on the full-time responsibility of watching children. It almost always negatively affects their productivity and job stability in their roles.
So, instead — they looked at their combined income and had an open discussion about how much overtime her husband would “need to work” to pay a portion of their expensive childcare costs.
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“He’s trading his time for money,” she said. “That’s how we budget for childcare. How much overtime do you have to work to pay for this amount of the childcare budget?”
Turner also shared her view that the childcare problem and rising costs can’t simply be “solved” by having the perfect financial tools. “It’s a problem that’s affecting everyone no matter what your socio-economic background is. It’s a childcare crisis.”
“We also understand that we’re incredibly privileged,” she honestly admitted. “We’re white, privileged people living in the suburbs who make very good salaries. So, if we’re struggling with childcare, that means everyone is.”
In our current economy, families are forced to make sacrifices to simply survive. Whether it’s groceries, childcare, saving for college, or building an “emergency fund,” they’re overworking themselves just to get by.
Turner considered quitting her job to replace childcare, but other rising costs like housing and food have made it impossible.
“Childcare is an industry that every other industry relies on, and yet it’s crumbling to pieces. We need to pay attention to childcare and funding affordable and safe [options] for families because it’s [inaccessible] and unaffordable in every state in our country.”
A 2023 survey from Care.com found that over 67% of parents were paying 20% or more of their annual incomes on childcare — nearly as much as they are paying on housing. As costs continue to rise in every aspect of people’s lives — from food to housing to interest rates for loans — this problem only becomes more exacerbated, making it impossible for families to pay for bills, let alone save money for emergencies, retirement, or leisure.
Outside of childcare, Turner said the costs of raising her four children only continue to rise as they get older. “There’s this weird idea that once your kids hit public school, the cost just disappears. It does not.”
From paying for extracurricular activities to buying groceries Turner said they’ve struggled to budget everything they want to provide for their children.
She went on to say, "This is the hamster wheel that so many parents find themselves on, where I can’t afford to work because of childcare, but I also can’t afford to not work because everything else is so expensive.”
The fact that even people making upwards of $200K are financially “struggling” provides a sense of backward unification. If we’re all struggling with similar problems something has to change, right?
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories