My Family Of 5 Lives On $90,000 A Year In Dallas, And ‘It’s A Struggle Financially’

Ask any American with young children what their No. 1 household expense is, and you’ll 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 wouldn’t 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 you’d like to be featured in an installment, email us at [email protected].

Name: Rachael Gomez

Age: 34

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

Location: Dallas area

Children’s ages: 7 months, 2 years and 9 years (oldest child is Gomez’s 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 weren’t 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 didn’t align. We put Aly Rose on six to eight different waiting lists for day cares before she was born, and then a couple after. I’ve only even gotten a call