Sometimes staying home is a financial sacrifice for a family. I know some can argue that by the time you pay for childcare, lunches out, work clothes, transportation and tax increases you may break even or even make more by staying home. It depends on the situation though: how much you made, how much the other parent makes, if there is another parent, your distance from work, type of work, previous cost of childcare and monthly costs. If you are loosing your income by staying home or if you have less than you need for other reasons it helps to utilize programs put in place for people of middle to low incomes.
WARNING! SOAP BOX ALERT! SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU JUST WANT THE "HOW": Sometimes it's difficult to accept help so here's how I rationalize it. Other industrialized modern nations offer SO much more maternity leave, healthcare and childcare. There are incentives and subsidies to stay home here in America too, but they are less obvious. I feel like the work I am doing raising kids all day is useful to society but I do not receive a pay check. Instead, the government and large corporations see the value and need for people providing unpaid childcare and has created ways that families are more able to "make it work" for the short time that kids are little. This rationalization may not based in truth and your political convictions may not match this sentiment, but that's what I tell myself. When it is my turn to be able to make more money I will be happy to help someone else stay home and/or make ends meet. I see the value in free public education for children and in quality early childcare. I am willing to give money to others and accept money from others so that the children we are raising today are getting enough to become great adults. I am so grateful that there are programs like these. I want to thank anyone reading this who is on the giving side of the equation. I will try to raise and teach the the kids the best I can to make it worth your while.
Now that THAT is out of the way, here's the how to for the State of California (not sure what applies in other states, sorry):
These are all income and family size based so you may or may not qualify, but it doesn't hurt to check it out. I may have missed some low-income programs because we are more in the middle range.
Utilities:
PG&E
http://www.pge.com/myhome/customerservice/financialassistance/
FERA-
This program is for middle income families. It takes the edge off of the bill like a gas and electric coupon. We were on this for a while and I never really could guess how much it would take off automatically each month. They have some formula for what percent they take off based on usage. When we were on FERA I think we saved about $20-50 a month.
CARE-
If you make even less and/or have a larger family at home you may qualify for CARE instead of FERA. CARE is more for low income families. It gives an even bigger discount on the bill each month. We save about $50-100 a month.
Energy Partners Program-
If you qualify for CARE (and a couple of other qualifications) you can also sign up for the Energy Partners Program. After you sign up, a team of 2 workers comes out to your home and looks for anyway you can save electricity and gas (including insulation, lighting and refrigerators). Then, this is the amazing part, they come back and DO ALL THE WORK FOR FREE! Not only do they do it for free, but it is very professionally done and then you save all that money on your electric/gas bill from then on. We even qualified for a brand new refrigerator (ours was from the early 90's and the door didn't shut properly) which I'm sure has saved us so much in electric costs. They sealed the light switches and plugs, put in a new light fixture, replaced the light bulbs that weren't already fluorescent, sealed a bunch of holes, sealed the doors with weatherstripping and told us how we could save more by turning off appliances and such. If you are like me you keep reading all these library books about how to fix your home to save the earth, but know you can't afford it right now. This is the way. It was awesome. Do it for the polar bears :).
There are also a one time assistance program and a medical utilities assistance program on the website that I do not have experience with.
Heath Insurance:
Healthy Families
http://www.healthyfamilies.ca.gov/Home/default.aspx
Healthy Families-
Health insurance and health care is a HUGE part of our monthly budget even though we are blessed to be healthy. Even with Healthy Families we spend more on heath care per month than on food. Healthy Families is a huge help. It is health insurance just for the kids in middle income families. The premiums are based on income and family size and you can get a discount of 25% for signing up for automatic payments. With the discount we pay $10 a month per kid. I did NOT leave off a zero. Then well visits are free and sick visits or emergency room visits are $10. There is no deductible. It includes medical, dental and vision. They do not ask you (like they do for private insurance) to write a 20 page document about your child's past heath escapades. They just insure. They insure that you are not up in the middle of the night with a child that is sick wondering if you should take them to the emergency room not based on symptoms, but on cost. I have thankfully only been to the emergency room with a child once and I am so glad my ability to pay the bills that month did not have to cross my mind that night.
AIM
http://www.aim.ca.gov/Home/default.aspx
AIM-
With my private insurance which I am paying $360 a month for it would cost about $5,000 for me for maternity care and to have a baby in a hospital. I am talking about a completely healthy pregnancy and a completely natural childbirth. My current health plan is no longer available, so, if I was looking around for heath insurance today it would cost $7,000 out of my own pocket for maternity care and the birth. It could be twice that is my pregnancy was during 2 calendar years (any conception after March) This is where AIM came in with my last pregnancy. AIM is health insurance for middle income pregnant women who don't have maternity coverage or have to pay more than $500 to grow and have a baby. You pay 1.5% of your yearly income as a one time fee which covers everything medical for the entire pregnancy. All pre-natal visits, other doctor visits, the whole birth, and medical fees 60 days after the birth. I was able to see the same doctors/midwives and receive the same care for a fraction of what I would have paid. The State of California figures that it is more expensive for women not to get maternity care and have sick babies than it is to cover them at a reasonable cost. Plus your baby is enrolled with minimal paperwork after the birth into Healthy Families.
Medi-Cal
http://www.dhcs.ca.gov/individuals/Pages/default.aspx
Medi-Cal-
If you make to little to qualify for Healthy Families and AIM, you may qualify for Medi-Cal. It is health insurance for low-income Californians in certain categories. I do not know much about it, but the website is listed above. I think it may cover some pregnancy stuff like AIM.
On a side note-
If you or your children do not qualify for assistance in health insurance, the best deal I have found for non-maternity coverage is Tonik (by Blue Cross/Anthem, but only online on a separate website from the regular Blue Cross/Anthem).
Phone:
LifeLine
http://www.californialifeline.com/source/MainPage.aspx
LifeLine-
LifeLine is a program that gives a discount on basic landline telephone service in California for middle/low income households. I was able to sign up through AT&T, but I think you can sign up through all California landline companies. It cut the local part of the phone bill in half. Every little bit helps.
Food:
WIC
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/wicworks/Pages/default.aspx
WIC-
The WIC program provides a little extra food to prenant women, nursing women (the first year only), and children under 5 in mid/low income families. The family receives coupons for very specific foods and trades them for those foods at the grocery store. Some things we get from WIC for the 2 kids are: milk, peanut butter/beans, juice, bread/tortillas/other whole grains, eggs, cereal, fruits and vegetables and cheese. During the summer, you can even get coupons for the farmer's market. They are pretty specific about exactly which type of each food you get (like eggs need to be white, medium sized, non-organic and not free-range), but once you make the first trip to the grocery store (I would recommend doing this with out the kids if possible) it becomes pretty quick. I wouldn't normally buy juice (then the kids only want to drink that and I would rather they eat fruit), so I get the frozen concentrate and use it in homemade smoothies or as a sweetener in plain yogurt. It buys about $100 in food every month for my 4 and 1 year old. You have to go meet with the advisor every month or so with the kids, but the meetings are painless (except the time I had thrown my back out picking up Quentin and could barely walk into the office :o).
CalFresh
http://www.calfresh.ca.gov/
CalFresh-
CalFresh is the new Food Stamps with a fresh new name. I do not have experience with it but the website is listed above. I assume it is to help low income Californians buy food.
If there are other programs out there to help out families let me know in comments and I will add them on. I can't tell you how many hours it took me to figure out all the ways we could get help. I hope that buy compiling this list I can save you some hours and therefore increase your hourly salary as a stay-at-home parent from $0 to $0 :).
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