Why we’re going — and staying — in debt for quality child care

How one family uses debt for a sense of safety for their child

Here I am, in the thick of it.

$7,581 in medical debt, $36,957 in student loans and $37,347 in credit card debt, for a grand total of $81,886. Then there’s my home loan, two car loans and my partner's student loans. And no one in my life (besides my partner) knows I'm drowning in debt.

To be fair, I keep up appearances well.

On the outside, it looks like my little family is doing all the right things in the right order — first comes college, then comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage and all that jazz.

My partner and I both have college degrees and seemingly good full-time jobs, though not really in our fields. I work in admin for a public school district, and my partner works for a museum creating video content for exhibits and social media.

We've never been late on a mortgage payment — on purpose. We know we can't lose the house. We bought in 2021 before the interest rates started going up. Renting in our area is now more expensive than continuing to pay the mortgage, even with all the other expenses that come with owning a house.

My partner works full time during the week and one day each weekend at his second job at a different museum. I work full time during the week and take care of our baby on the weekends. He gets inexpensive health insurance from his job, and I get free health insurance for me and inexpensive insurance for our kid from mine.

Our only child is about to be two years old. And thus begins our main expense.

We had to do IVF to create our baby, a $3,000 bill for me. My baby came seven weeks before he was supposed to, and had a three-week stay in the NICU. That was a $3,000 bill for him plus a $3,000 bill for me. I had a week-long stay in the same hospital and then took a three-month maternity leave, made up of five weeks paid vacation and sick time, plus seven weeks unpaid. When my time was up, my partner took six weeks of 100% paid paternity leave. (What?! We're so lucky on that, I know.) The baby has been in day care since he was 4 1/2 months old and we both went back to work.

I knew before we had a kid that everyone says day care is expensive. But damn. Daycare is expensive. It takes at least half of my take-home pay each month. We were already living mostly paycheck to paycheck before this giant weekly bill came into our life.

I don’t have family that is close enough or willing to offer child care on a regular basis. We’re in the cheapest day care facility I could find that didn't make me want to run away screaming. There are cheaper in-home options in my area, but when we went to do home visits... well, I got the ick, as the kids say. We saw homes that were not as clean as I wanted them to be, homes that did not have adequate places for babies to sleep, homes that did not have space to walk around because the furniture was too big for the room and the number of kids in the house.

What it truly boiled down to on these home visits was that there is no single stranger I trust enough to watch my baby all day, every day.

I wanted some oversight and state visits every once in a while. I wanted a second person to be able to give my kid’s caretaker a vacation day, a lunch break or a bathroom break. I also wanted stability. I didn’t want to have to rely on the health of a single person. I wanted a team I could rely on.

Every single one of those homes I rejected was full of kids being taken care of. I completely recognize my privilege here: Because I’m able to access credit cards and other debt, I can make a different choice for my child than some parents have access to.

I wanted to feel like my baby was in safe hands. And that feeling alone is priceless. Being able to drop him off and not be overwhelmingly worried or anxious about his well-being is such a huge weight off my shoulders.

And for that sense of safety and security for our baby, my partner and I have chosen to go into and stay in debt indefinitely. We’ve maxed out all of our credit cards. We’re looking into a home equity line of credit. We have to skip a utility bill payment here and there when things are tight. We’re considering bankruptcy.

We are taking all the help we can find while still being discreet. We take a monthly food box from my job that covers anywhere from 25% to 50% of the groceries we need to make it through the month. We get diapers from our local diaper bank and extra food from a food bank truck that’s near our house every Saturday. We shop at thrift stores and clearance sections for clothes when we have to, but we try to shop as little as possible. We love hand-me-downs from friends and family; they still feel new to us.

I implore you to really look around you for anyone quietly in need. Go to lunch with your work bestie and pay for both meals without asking. Offer your new mom friend the toys, clothes and furniture your kids have outgrown. Buy groceries for your cousin who just had a baby and doesn’t get paid maternity leave. These are all things that have happened to me in the past two years, and I can’t even begin to express how grateful I am for each person who’s helped to take care of me and my family.

We choose to look at taking on all the debt we can as surviving a tough time, rather than failing. Using all of the resources that are available to us, including our debt, makes the biggest difference in our day-to-day lives.

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My book, YDNAB, helps you free yourself from the tyranny of toxic budget culture, and build an ethical, stress-free financial life.