“Each year we cut down on Christmas and birthday presents. We can’t give gifts to our other family and friends. I swap kids’ clothes with people in our town because we can’t afford new, and I utilize QCC food pantry so that I can get help with food costs. I do not know how to stress how every dollar counts for our family and how deeply I am affected by the small increases in our pay in relationship to the increasing cost of living in Massachusetts.”
I am closing the year my tenth year of service at Quinsigamond Community College, and I have always been grateful for the opportunities for growth that the college has provided me which truly life changing. Getting my first job at QCC helped me recover from the financial distress my mother’s unexpected passing had left behind, helped me pay for my very modest wedding, and helped me get a second car.
Since I’ve started here, I’ve had three children. In 2018 I had my first child and the laws surrounding family leave were very different and I couldn’t take a proper maternity leave. His birth was traumatic and life threatening to us both. I suffered injury and great mental distress, and just as I was able to walk without pain, I needed to come back to work after 5 short weeks. My husband, a dedicated EMT who has worked for companies based in Boston and Worcester, would not have been able to support his family of three in our small one-bedroom apartment. Childcare being as outrageously expensive as it is, he switched to working overnights so that I could go to work during the day. The stress and pressure of trying to survive on two stable jobs on no sleep almost tore our family apart and put us in a mountain of credit card debt as rent increased and food and utility prices continued to rise.
I continued to move up at QCC, getting two promotions since 2018. We were able to purchase a small house in Barre, MA so we could escape the rising rent, but put us further in debt with home improvements needed to make our home safe. As the financial pressure began to rise, my son received a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder before the age of three. This came with many new medical costs and time off from work for appointments and evaluations. To become a higher earner, I decided to go to grad school and get my MBA, which for the cost of the program and accrued student loan debt, has not paid off in my salary.
In 2021 I unexpectedly became pregnant with twins. I am blessed with my three wonderful children, but a son with autism and twin newborns poses many financial challenges. With our combined income, we make too much for any sort of assistance other than supplemental mass health due to our son’s documented disability, so the struggle and surmounting debt continues. With a son on disability, we were able to be placed on a waitlist for childcare assistance, but the waitlist is so long our children will outgrow the need for childcare before we’re able to receive any benefit.
No longer able to escape the costs of childcare, I now pay $1,800 a month for three days of care for my kids. From what I understand, in Massachusetts, that is incredibly modest. Now I have a small house that we have outgrown and cannot afford to leave or improve, I have three children to feed and clothe, an unbearable amount of healthcare expenses, taxes, car repairs, and utility bills etc. There is no end in sight to the debt that we are accruing just to get by. In another attempt to get some relief, I have taken on a second job at the college and my husband has started taking on overtime on the weekends. We are rarely together as a family, and when we are, we are struggling to get balance maintaining a household, food shopping, and keeping our kids as involved in activities as possible within our financial limits. We want our children to have a good life, and it truly hurts me when I have to make such balances that harms their social development.
Each year we cut down on Christmas and birthday presents. We can’t give gifts to our other family and friends. I swap kids’ clothes with people in our town because we can’t afford new, and I utilize QCC food pantry so that I can get help with food costs. I do not know how to stress how every dollar counts for our family and how deeply I am affected by the small increases in our pay in relationship to the increasing cost of living in Massachusetts.
I am so proud that our state has given our students new opportunities with the MassEducate programs, but it adds to the ever-growing pressure of my already burnt-out self and coworkers. There is no stopping to breathe. There are no vacations. There is no room for professional development, no room college service, and no room for self-care or reflection.
Society tells us to go to school, get a good job, get married, buy a house, start a family, and then all will be well until we retire. Each one of those decisions got me further and further away from a life that I can afford to live and now I am feeling punished by those choices. I am one of many who shares a similar story, and it is only a matter of time before we are too burnt out to persist in this matter. So I appreciate the opportunity to share my voice with you.