Time is Money, But It's Also Free

The Catch-22 of Being Lower Middle Class with Young Kids

I want to clarify some things about the time commitment around prepping, pantry storage, frugal living, and being a single income household. Because ultimately there are trade-offs, what I save monetarily is absolutely sacrificed in time.

We are not poor, but we are low-middle class (WIC eligible, but not SNAP eligible, for context). We are fortunate enough to own our house, but we do have various debts we are working to pay off. Our newest car is from 2005 and when it breaks, we can’t afford repairs unless my husband fixes it himself. My husband has a union job, but he’s only been there a few months, so while the benefits are great it was a pay cut for him to join. We are not suffering, we have enough and we’re incredibly grateful, but our margins are incredibly thin. This background is important context for why I spend so much time on saving money and affordable prepping.

Why Do I Stay Home?

I am a stay-at-home-parent for many reasons. I get to homeschool my kids, providing them with social and learning opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have. I can nurse my babies on demand. I can care for a garden and take on massive canning projects on a week day. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. The obvious downside here is lack of income. But here’s the kicker: even if I wanted to, we can’t afford for me to work.

I have three, soon to be four, kids. If I put them in public school, I would still need to pay for childcare for two (soon to be three) of my kids at least part-time, and that’s not including summer break. When the new baby is born, I would have to pump (which is a huge time commitment) or pay for formula (which is expensive). I would have to juggle sick kid days with PTO, the stress of a job, making sure dinner still gets on the table, and all the other things involved in running a house. (My partner is a huge help, it wouldn’t all fall on me. However, because I am home I am able to take on more of that responsibility.) The likelihood of me finding a job that, after paying for childcare, actually provides us with cash in our pocket is incredibly low. If anything, there is a good chance that me having a job would end our WIC eligibility and actually set us back financially.

Division of Labor: Income vs. Expenditures

My partner works a set amount of hours, and for each hour is compensated a certain amount of money. At the end of the week, he gets a check that clearly states what his time was worth. In our capitalist society, it is easy to see exactly what the “value” of his time is, since it’s reflected in his income.

I don’t work less than my husband. I also don’t get a check at the end of the week stating exactly what the value of my time is. There are no timecard stamps, stating the exact number of hours. Some weeks, I spend two 12 hour days straight canning. Some weeks, I’m laying on the couch with morning sickness from dawn until dusk. There are productive seasons and slow seasons, seasons spent out of the house for days in a row and seasons we are hunkered down at home. The clock never “starts” or “stops” and the work is fluid.

There are many ways to measure the work I do, but one simple goal I have is to save as much money as I (reasonably) can. While I can’t exchange my time for a paycheck, I can exchange it for a lack of spending. This is difficult to quantify. It seems like a lot of work for little cost savings (and sometimes that’s true). But when your margins are razor thin, those little cost savings add up in big ways.

The Homemade-Is-Cheaper Myth

I know this topic gets people hot and bothered. But there are many, many things I do that don’t actually save us dollars. One of those things is making food from scratch and food preservation. Now before you come at me, let me explain.

If I do the math for making my own loaf of bread, the bread I make at home costs roughly the same as a loaf from the grocery store per unit. But I still make my own bread. Why? Because it increases the quality of the food my family has access to without increasing cost. My homemade bread tastes better, has less ingredients, and is overall a better quality product than the cheapest bread in the grocery store. If I compared my bread to its equivalent in quality, I ultimately am saving a lot of money.

The same thing goes for canning. Putting up berries as jam results in a jar roughly equivalent in cost to what you would find at the cheapest price point at the grocery store. However, my jam tastes significantly better and contains just sugar and berries.

There are some exceptions to the rule, for example homemade yogurt and bone broth are definite cost savers and making it myself increases the quality of the product. But most of the homemade things I do have less to do with cost and more to do with quality. This is a trade-off I’m willing to make, and one where my time is improving my family’s quality of life without a concrete paycheck.

This is also why I always tell you to do the math to figure out if you’re saving money or not. You need to decide which items are worth investing your time in, because even when you’re working to increase the quality of the food your family eats, if your margins are as thin as ours are, you need to at least be breaking even.

Why I’m Back Talking About This Incessantly

I mentioned before that I used to talk about this stuff on Instagram quite a bit, and then I took a break with the intent of retiring the account to focus on The Recipe Graveyard. This pregnancy meant that I didn’t have a garden this year, didn’t do meat birds, and fell off the bread making wagon. So why am I back?

Quite simply, Trump winning the election. I follow politics for many reasons, but one pretty straightforward one is that economic policy can have a direct impact on my life and I am operating on razor thin margins. Trump has outlined his economic policy, and while there are plenty of people who have deluded themselves into thinking it will decrease the cost of living, that’s not reality. Tariffs, mass deportations, and a national sales tax are not going to decrease the price of goods. Rolling back various parts of the social safety net could ultimately lead to the rolling back of WIC, and student loan debt relief is dead.

In response to this, most Trump defenders say “it won’t be that bad", “he won’t actually do that”, or they have an interesting convoluted argument about how businesses won’t raise prices to accommodate the increase in labor/taxes they will suddenly be facing.

For my family, “not that bad” is still bad. I am already pinching pennies. Even a small increase in cost of living, before my husband’s first couple union raises take effect in the next few years, is going to hurt.

In response to “he won’t actually do that”, I say why wouldn’t he? If someone tells me they’re going to punch me in the face, I get ready to duck. If someone says they’re going to increase the cost of living through their policies, I’m going to make sure I have done what I can to buffer my family against that increase.

In regards to business not raising prices, I don’t believe in the altruism of corporations. If the past four years has taught us anything, it’s that businesses will take every opportunity to exploit the consumer. Why would this time be different?

This article isn’t about the election or politics, and I understand how reductive this view of the outcome appears. I know I will be minimally impacted compared to many people. In this moment, however, I am trying to focus on the things I have direct control over and help the people I can. For me, that means sharing the knowledge I have with as many people as possible so that we can all help each other when the cost of living inevitably rises.

Frequency Illusion

I did not wake up on November 6, 2024 and say “I’m going to overhaul my whole life, start prepping in earnest, and stock my pantry because I am terrified of the end of the world.” Everything I have shared, and will continue to share, was how I already lived my life (with the exception of the pregnancy break).

What did change, however, is how often I talk about the work I do. I decided after the election results, and the likely increase to cost of living in the New Year, that I should share the ways I make our life work to help people who never had an opportunity to learn. My lifestyle hasn’t changed, I just talk about it in detail a lot now, and spend more time answering people’s questions.

I can’t afford to financially support community organizations and mutual aid on a regular basis. I have three, soon to be four, kids and can’t go to events or marches. I have maxed out the seats in my car, and can’t even offer you a ride to the airport. But I can take the time to share what I know, to help you organize your life and start you on a path towards creating a sense of security in the face of uncertainty.

Someone has to keep the home fires burning, create places of rest and stability, in an ever changing world. And for now, that’s enough.

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Keep moving forward, friends. There’s always hope, but it takes work to keep that hope alive. You’ve got this.