How single-income families make it work on Long Island

As the cost of living on Long Island has mushroomed, so has Kelsey Stanya’s family. She has three children under age 4. And that has created a question for her family that many Long Island parents with young children ask: How can we afford to have one of us stay home full time?

The answer is not easy, Long Island stay-at-home parents say. Getting by on two incomes on Long Island these days is challenging enough. The stay-at-home math means eliminating one full-time salary while adding a baby to support. Have more children, and the calculation becomes even more of a struggle. But some families are finding ways to make it work, by sacrificing luxuries, by having the employed parent work even harder, by help from extended family and more.

One thing Stanya, 30, and her husband, Michael, 31, of Middle Island, did to achieve their goal was to intentionally have their children — Jax, 3, Maverick, 2, and Reagan, 5 months — close in age. That way, Stanya says, she can return to work more quickly if she chooses  once they are all in school, potentially minimizing the years the family is living on one income. Stanya was a fourth grade teacher at a private school for eight years before leaving when Jax was born; she's hoping to have one more child.

She also started a side-hustle focusing on her role as a stay-at-home mother — she’s got 81,000 followers on Instagram under the handle @the_homegrown_mama. She says she goes to the websites of brands she uses for her children — such as their diapers — and shares a code that, if others use it, she is rewarded either with free products, financially or a combination of both. "Any single person can go on their website and use their ‘share a link’," Stanya says. "Even though I don’t work, I’m able to contribute in that sense. You don’t have to have as many followers as I do."

Here is advice from Stanya and other families who have managed to have one stay-at-home parent:

Plan ahead

Brynn Caponi, 34, of Center Moriches, says her husband, Louie, 34, purposely chose to be a software engineer so he would earn enough money for his wife to stay home with their children. "He went into that career with the goal of supporting his family in that way," Brynn says. The Caponis have three children, Easton, 4, Hudson, 2, and Isla, 1, and Brynn stopped working outside the home with middle and high school students at a church after Easton was born. "It was kind of natural to slip into the stay-at-home role," she says. She's not sure how long she'll continue to stay at home, she says, but definitely while the children are young.

Divide and conquer

Stanya says she takes care of most of the work on the home front. "My husband works in the city in construction, heavy machinery. That’s long hours," she says. He leaves home at 4:30 in the morning, gets home at 3 p.m. and often will work again after dinner and on weekends because he wants to take on additional roles, she says. "When I met him, I knew kind of the trajectory of his career in the next five to 10 years," she says. "This is the work hard and save money phase. In the next couple of years, it won’t look like this."

It helps that Michael purchased their house in 2012. "Instead of buying a motorcycle or a boat, he purchased a house," Stanya says. Stanya says she briefly looked into day care with her first pregnancy but found it would have cost $2,000 a month just for one, which bolstered her decision to stay home instead of putting her first child in day care all day. And now she has three.

Make sacrifices

Stephanie Cross, 40, of West Islip, says she no longer will grab coffee out or get her hair and nails done as often since she and Kyle Collier, 36, who owns his own business, had their children, Jax, 7, Benji, 4, and JoJo, 1. "Any of these kind of pampering things that we as women enjoy doing for ourselves take a back burner," she says. "Also, all those activities require someone to watch the children."

Cross says it also helps that her family lives in her grandmother’s house; they have the downstairs and her grandmother lives upstairs. "We live with family, so we don’t pay market value rent, fortunately," Cross says. "It’s not an ideal situation but it’s fine for now while the kids are little at least." She says there's "no set plan" for how long she will stay at home. 

Cut costs

"One of the biggest things I did was I shopped at thrift stores," says Nicole Smith, 54, of Freeport, who spent 24 years as a stay-at-home mother to Jordyn, now 24, Brian, 20, and Bailee, 18. She did it before thrifting was "a thing," she says.

Smith made her husband, Brian, now 53, who is a field technician for Verizon, lunch every day, and meal planned family dinners. "Really being intentional with your money," she says of how she did it. "Really being conscious of how much you spend and what you spend it on." Even down to the small items, she says: "We didn’t buy ice cream from the truck," Smith says. There were ice pops in the freezer, she says. "Little things like that you don’t realize but they add up." Now that her youngest is in college — a freshman at Syracuse University — she’s started her own organizing and charcuterie businesses.

Cross echoes Smith. "I can’t fathom trying to buy clothes full price on a limited income. The consignment sale has made a difference," she says. She buys the kids’ clothes, her clothes, her husband’s clothing, toys and even birthday presents that way at discounted prices.

"I’m very much a ‘use things until they die’ kind of person," Cross says. She says, for instance, she didn’t buy a new tablet until the one she had was so old that it wouldn’t support her apps anymore.

  The local library is a big help in controlling family entertainment costs, Brynn Caponi says. "I don’t rent movies; we get them from the library. I don’t buy books, we get them from the library," she says. She’s even checked out passes to the Long Island Children’s Museum and Harbes Farms from the Center Moriches Library. "I once checked out an inflatable screen with a projector to watch an outdoor movie," she says. "It’s a huge resource for us."

Take advantage of Long Island

A couple of moms praised the Suffolk County Farm in Yaphank. "To go there for the day is absolutely free," Stanya says. "Getting out and doing things is so key for stay-at-home moms. You can find a mom in your neighborhood and meet up and go to the park. It breaks up the day and gives you something other than the mundane laundry, vacuuming, picking up the toys."

Getting out and doing things is so key for stay-at-home moms. You can find a mom in your neighborhood and meet up and go to the park. It breaks up the day and gives you something other than the mundane laundry, vacuuming, picking up the toys.

- Kelsey Stanya

Caponi says she asks her parents and in laws for annual passes such as the Long Island Aquarium for holiday presents; she says she takes the children to the aquarium at least once a week.
"We have a camper, and we camp with our kids at Smith Point," she says. "There are so many awesome places to go on Long Island. It just makes for a really fun childhood."

Remind yourself what you’re getting in return

Stanya says she recognizes she's fortunate. “The fact that I get to stay home with my children is an absolute privilege,” she says.

"The hardest part is keeping the mindset and your priorities and remembering how lucky you are living on Long Island," Caponi says. She and her husband both grew up in Westhampton. "I would rather live in a small older house on Long Island than a mansion anywhere else."

The Smith family stayed in the same house for 25 years so a parent could be home with the children. Even with today's higher costs, she says she would have made it work so she could be home.

"We could have had the big mansion, but then I would have missed those moments with them," Smith says. "That wouldn’t have been worth it."

By Beth Whitehouse

beth.whitehouse@newsday.comBethWhitehouse1

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.