Have you ever wondered how teachers can have so many kids at home when it is so well known that they don't get paid enough, or even what they're actually worth?
I would even argue the point that teacher's families get more "income" while in school through grants, loans and a part time job than they do once starting their actual career. So how do we families of public school teachers make it all work?
The History & Why:
When I was younger my Dad always talked about the career of teaching as if it were one of the best because it was stable. In public school it is funded by the state, meaning that there will never be a mass firing due to inadequate funds from an economy flop. This sounded cool to me so I always kept an open mind about it. My list of experiences and jobs I wanted to pursue was long and sometimes felt endless though. I wanted to learn and experience so much and placing all my eggs into simply teaching was never really in the cards for me I guess.
I met my husband while we were still both going to college and we were not one of those couples to wait till events finished in order to start new turns in life. So, we got married. We also believe that "God will provide a way" as many others believe about having children. I think my children are up to the Lord's timing, not my own. I do have preferences, but would rather focus on what the Lord would give me, and when, then my own plans. His plans seem to pan out better for me than my own ever did. So, you guessed it, we had our first baby. Yes, while we were both still in college.
I was unable to continue my education or my job nearing the end of the pregnancy and after the baby was born. That was ok though. It was a big transition and felt like a huge job to take care of a new life instead of focusing on those other things. This left my husband to both work and go to the University full time. Together we had grown dreams of creating art through video and photography. Opening a digital media center and then expanding into other business opportunities, like running a reception center and art gallery. They were big dreams and we had started the first classes to get a degree toward that purpose. After I couldn't go with him anymore, he decided he needed to switch from where we had been going to school, back to the University we met at, and go into some type of stable degree like teaching. We decided the most stable and most enjoyable degree for him would be the generalist art teaching degree because that degree allowed for him to teach any type of art. It could be drawing, painting, printmaking, video, photo, ceramics... all the fun stuff. Specializing felt like it would be limiting his potential for getting that future teaching job, so we veered away from that, although he did get a bunch of extra certifications in his favorite topics, like video editing.
Ok, so we had our first baby in college... well, by the time he switched programs he had 5 years of additional schooling he would need to do. About a semester of that his old credits counted towards, but this decision basically started him over. We also had him do summers and squeeze in the max limit of class credits to finish in around 4 years instead. I've had a baby every 2 years so far. Our second baby was born during one of his busiest semesters. He'd wake up early to work at an elementary, go straight to class, do homework at the campus, and make it home most nights by 2am. Thank heaven this wasn't every night, and thank heaven his work was flexible with his school schedule. Our third baby arrived just a couple months after he graduated. He was called with his job acceptance to teach video, photo, and drawing at a high school in a very nice east side neighborhood while we were in the hospital with our 2 day old little one. He is in his second year of teaching now and we are expecting another little spirit at the beginning of next school year. Wow that is coming up fast now.
The Finances:
Ok, so that is the history behind why and how we got here. Now for the nitty gritty finances. We have 3 kids ages 5 and under. We love entrepreneurial projects so we like to do those, but we did much more of those while my husband was still attending college courses. Time is a hard commodity to come by for a good teacher, and when he does have time our kids love and need him so much that those other things are hard to get to. Our personal video business used to do about $10,000 a year, and then what we needed to live beyond that in school we budgeted per semester for and used grants, scholarships, and student loans to pull off. We felt tight, but in control. When I was pregnant I was able to get the government assistance program called medicaid to help pay for anything that went wrong (I barely used it though, because 2 of my 3 were home births). Food assistance was also offered to us. We felt very blessed, but wanted to be self sufficient as soon as possible. We couldn't wait for my hubby to graduate and get into his career so that we could have enough extra income that we wouldn't need to ask for help anymore.
Actually dealing with finances once we didn't have semester by semester loans coming in, and instead had a monthly income, has been tough. It is far easier to budget 4 or 6 months out at a time and just stick to that than it is to budget per month. We thought our income would feel like much more, so we bought a house at the very tip top of our qualifying range within a mile or so of where my hubby was working. Its a cute little house (small for having a fourth one on the way, but it'll work somehow).
Now, I know teachers in each area make different amounts of money and then that changes according to how many extra pet projects they do for the school, as well as extra certifications, and extra years of teaching experience within a district. My husband does a lot of random projects, and took on an extra class period, so he is barely above base pay right now. I tried to calculate what his take home pay was after all the deductions that they make for both taxes and for medical. Take home pay is just over $28k a year. No wonder I feel more poor now than I did while we were in school. No one is helping us with food or co pay expenses anymore, we have almost double the housing costs (a little more than $1350 in mortgage a month with a little less than $250 in utilities), we have bigger stomachs to feed as the kids grow, and there is no more income now than there was with all those loans coming in. We are on a repayment plan that allows us to not pay anything toward our student loans unless we want to, thankfully. With this as our primary income and only maybe $400 coming in from our side projects a year now, its interesting to try to find a happy financial medium for raising kids.
What we're doing to survive:
We try to buy everything we can in cash, this includes small and big things alike, from books to cars.
We try to cut medical expenses by prevention. Eating healthy, taking vitamins, using natural solutions and remedies to help with anything that comes up. For example, it is much less expensive to use a drop of Lavender essential oil on a cut than it is to use something like Neosporin. Though I have used both. Essential oils and natural solutions have taken care of most of the problems with health, first aid or hygiene my family has faced and has been much less expensive and usually is more quickly effective than the co-pays and doctor prescribed remedies I also tried many times. This has saved our family hundreds, if not thousands of dollars (not to mention the saved time). When we have a little bit more income, like we did in school, I like to go to a chiropractor that specializes in pregnancy and children once a month for each member of the family. This keeps the nerves properly aligned so there is better behavior along with better health and immune function. It also helps the kids recover faster when they do get sick or when they fall. We have to live without this chiropractic perk for a bit but will continue it once we get a small raise or find time to do more entrepreneurial work (hard to come by lately).
We have never purchased a new car with car payments. We usually purchase cheap used cars that seem like they would be reliable. Some have been more reliable than others, but it has been cheaper to fix up a $2,300 van and spend $2,500 to fix it up that year, than it ever would have been to purchase a new van and make payments for both principle and interest. We plan to purchase new one day, but only when we have the cash. We will never have a car payment.
There have been moments where we have to use credit cards, but we try to pay these off within the month that we use them so that no interest is able to accrue on our purchase. We try to avoid ever having a balance or even spending on our credit lines when possible though.
As of now our only debt is the student loans and our mortgage. The mortgage is close to what we'd pay in rent for the same size home, so I think of it more as investing in a rental to ourselves. A forced savings account for the equity is how my husband puts it. Even if we built no equity, we've been able to stay here without a landlord looking over our shoulder, and paying the same price for our size in this area. So the mortgage was worth its title of debt for me.
The student loans however, I do regret. We needed them to get through school, but they are hanging over our heads now and we do not make enough income to even touch them. So they are just there accruing interest until we get a raise in a couple years or we come up with some other inventive income stream. They also have made it so we qualify for a much smaller home than we would have without them. Even though we could earn a substantial equity by selling our house now, because of the student loans we don't qualify for the type of home we feel would best suit our kids. Without those loans we would be able to qualify easily, and ironically our payments would go down drastically even though we'd be moving up. Too bad the decision to take these loans gets in the way. It does help us with getting more inventive every day to make life comfortable for adding a fourth to the home we are in now.
I laugh when people want to sell us things on a payment plan (big or little). Really, we can't afford the extra payment for anything. If we could, it would just come out of our food money, and I would rather eat.
For food it is easiest to stay in budget when we use a meal plan and buy our vegetables and fruit in bulk. Meats are best bought on sale. We love the bulk case lot sales and the year round case discounts we can get. Buying bulk looks more expensive up front, but is cheaper in the end. Produce can be cheaper at local farmer's markets as well as through co-ops too.
For the kids clothes it is rare that we buy them new clothes. Instead we accept hand me downs from friends and family, gifts of clothing in every size, and if we need something that no one gave us (which happens occassionally), we make a trip to a local thrift store and find it for only a couple of dollars. Even my oldest is in gifts and hand me downs regularly.
When the kids have outgrown their clothes I do not get rid of them. Instead I have a system of bins, labeled by size. When the next kid gets to that size I have clothes for them. So we are always cycling through clothes. Some clothes get more worn than others and aren't useable anymore, but luckily we can either replace those cheap at the thrift store or someone jumps in to give us more hand me downs.
One of our key values as a family is to be close in proximity to everything we need to be doing. This helps us in many ways. One way is it saves us when the car is broken or we want to not waste gas money. My husband rides the mile bike ride to work in these times and most days that works out great. There is a grocery store just down the hill from our home, about a block away, that we have used our bikes to shop at as well. The kids ride in a bike trailer and we put the food in the back of the trailer to bring it home. Another reason I value this centralized life is laughed at by many, but it is important to me. I love knowing that if there were some major calamity, like an earthquake (which we are supposed to get here), then it would not be far for us to reunite as a family.
We started to do public school for our oldest, but due to a very long story of experiences and a very difficult transition of decisions in prayer we have turned to homeschooling. This year we were enrolled in an online public school since I didn't really know where to start as I had never considered this for our family. For our homeschool lessons I created a couple fun things along with finding materials that can be used and re-used for each child as they grow into needing the material. I don't do the programs that I have to buy each year, but save money by buying entire programs that will last me multiple years at a time. I regretted a few purchases, but was able to return those easily. My lessons have to be next to no pre-planning (I just don't have time) and they have to be very interesting to keep my kids attention. Most of it is literature based, as my daughter learns best that way, but my son learns best with kinesthetic learning styles, so for him we read it and then have to have an activity to reinforce what we learned. Life has become much easier with teaching them at home. I learn right along with them from their curriculum and it is just fun and easy to do school as time to learn & play together. Without the right program in place both public and home schooling is challenging, but when you find what your family needs, no matter where that is, things just start to flow better. It costs a couple hundred dollars a year for me to homeschool with my own choices of curriculum, but that is not per child, that is per family because the curriculum is reused for future kids. There are lots of fees associated with public school, so I figure its not too big of a price difference, just a lifestyle difference.
Conclusion:
We have made a lot of mistakes and have a long way to go, but I still believe that when you have kids in the Lords timing he somehow makes the finances work, even if it feels really challenging to do so. I am excited for the day that we feel like we have some financial wiggle room, but right now it just works out somehow, and that's ok. If you have kids and are worried about finances like I was, you probably only found what I did. People sharing stories like this, but they only had one or 2 kids, not 3 or 4. It is possible. It can be an emotional roller coaster if certain unexpected expenses pop up or when people respond to you in hurtful ways for having more kids with "that income." In the end kids can get by with very little, and so can we. The most costly portions of living are food, housing, and then whatever lifestyle choices your family deems necessary. If you are satisfied with a very conservative lifestyle than this may be an easy feat for your family. Every family is a little different, but somehow it all works out for the better.
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