Have you ever looked at your pay stub, seen a number that should be enough, and still felt like you were drowning? That question sat with me for weeks after I read a comment left on one of my earlier pieces about the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. The commenter — who signed his name simply as “Jerome in EP” — wrote something that stopped me mid-scroll: “I did the math. I teach math. I still can’t make it add up.”
I followed up. He agreed to talk. And when I finally sat down with Jerome LaRoche at a coffee shop near his school in El Paso, Texas, on a Tuesday afternoon in mid-March 2026, he arrived in a button-down shirt, graded papers tucked under one arm, and apologized for being three minutes late. That detail mattered to me. Jerome LaRoche is not the kind of man who makes excuses. He’s the kind of man who apologizes for three minutes.
A Salary That Looks Fine Until It Doesn’t
Jerome is 53, has been teaching high school math for 22 years, and brings home approximately $74,000 annually from the El Paso Independent School District — a figure that, in many American cities, would signal comfort. His wife, Denise, works part-time as a dental office receptionist, adding roughly $19,000 to the household’s gross income. On paper, they clear just over $93,000 a year combined.
But paper doesn’t pay the bills. Jerome walked me through their monthly obligations with the precision of someone who has rehearsed the numbers too many times to forget them. Mortgage: $1,340. Utilities and internet: approximately $310. Groceries for a family of four: roughly $920 a month, a figure Jerome said has climbed steadily over the past two years.
Their youngest, a three-year-old named Marcus, attends a licensed daycare center near their home in the Coronado neighborhood. That costs $1,780 a month — a price Jerome described as “the cheapest decent option we could find.” Their teenager, Aaliyah, is 13 and largely self-sufficient, but extracurriculars, school supplies, and the occasional medical co-pay add another $200 to $300 monthly.
Then there is the student loan. Jerome earned a Master’s degree in curriculum and instruction in 2009, borrowing approximately $41,000 to finish the program. After years of income-based repayment, forbearances, and one refinancing, his balance currently sits at $34,200. His monthly payment is $387.
The Insurance Change That Changed Everything
Jerome’s financial picture grew more complicated last fall. In October 2025, the school district shifted its employee health insurance to a new carrier — a move administrators described in a memo as offering “comparable coverage at reduced cost to the district.” For Jerome, the practical effect was the opposite.
Jerome takes two medications daily for a blood pressure condition diagnosed in 2021. Under the old plan, both prescriptions cost him a combined $18 a month. Under the new carrier, one drug was not covered on the formulary, and the other required a prior authorization that took six weeks to process. During that window, Jerome paid out of pocket.
The out-of-pocket cost during that six-week gap came to approximately $340. After the authorization was approved, his monthly prescription costs settled at $67 — still nearly four times what he paid before the switch. That $49-per-month difference may seem small in isolation, but Jerome framed it plainly: “That’s a week of Marcus’s lunch money.”
Discovering the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit — and Its Limits
Jerome told me he had heard of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit for years but assumed it was primarily for lower-income families. In early January 2026, a colleague mentioned it during a break-room conversation, and Jerome went home that night and researched it seriously for the first time.
What he found was complicated. The federal Child and Dependent Care Credit, governed by IRS Topic No. 602, allows taxpayers to claim a percentage of qualifying childcare expenses — up to $3,000 for one child and $6,000 for two or more children — as a non-refundable credit. The percentage of expenses you can claim decreases as your adjusted gross income rises, dropping to 20% for households earning above $43,000.
For the LaRoche family, that meant a maximum potential credit of $1,200 — 20% of the $6,000 expense ceiling — on childcare costs that actually exceeded $21,360 in 2025. Jerome sat with that number when I quoted it back to him.
His tax preparer confirmed the math in February 2026. Jerome filed his 2025 return and claimed the full Child and Dependent Care Credit: $1,200. He also claimed the Child Tax Credit for both Marcus and Aaliyah, receiving $2,000 per qualifying child under current law — a total of $4,000, though the credit phases down for higher-income filers. His household income kept both credits from being fully refundable, which further constrained his actual refund.
What the Numbers Actually Returned — and What Didn’t Change
Jerome’s total federal refund for tax year 2025 came to approximately $2,840, after accounting for his withholding, the Child and Dependent Care Credit, and the partial Child Tax Credit. He received the deposit in early March 2026. His reaction when it landed was not relief — it was a measured kind of resignation.
There was nothing left for the student loan beyond the minimum. There was nothing for the dental work Denise has been postponing. And there was, Jerome noted quietly, nothing to show Aaliyah, who recently asked why her family couldn’t take a vacation like some of her classmates do over spring break.
The Space Between “High Income” and Actually Fine
Jerome’s situation sits in a gap that gets surprisingly little attention in policy discussions. Households earning between roughly $75,000 and $100,000 often exceed the income thresholds for the most generous versions of federal and state relief programs — but face the same structural costs as everyone else. Childcare, prescription drugs, and student debt do not become cheaper because your W-2 crossed a certain line.
According to Child Care Aware of America, the average annual cost of center-based care for a toddler in Texas exceeded $12,000 in 2024 — and costs in urban areas like El Paso routinely run higher. Jerome’s $21,360 annual daycare bill is not unusual for his ZIP code or his child’s age group.
Jerome explored Texas’s childcare assistance program last summer and was told his household income exceeded the eligibility ceiling. He looked into prescription assistance programs through his drug’s manufacturer and found a patient assistance option — but the application required documentation of financial hardship that his income level, on paper, did not demonstrate.
“The system reads a number,” Jerome told me. “It doesn’t read what comes after the number.”
What Jerome Knows Now — and What He Wishes He’d Known Sooner
Jerome does not regret his graduate degree. He does not regret having Marcus at 50, though he laughs when he says it. What he regrets, if anything, is the time he spent assuming the system would be proportionate — that earning more would mean struggling less in a cleanly linear way.
When I asked what he wished he had known before the last two years, he paused for a long time before answering.
He enrolled in the Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account for the current plan year and is now setting aside the $5,000 annual maximum in pre-tax dollars for Marcus’s daycare costs. Combined with the Child and Dependent Care Credit — which is coordinated with FSA contributions under IRS rules — his tax benefit picture for 2026 is modestly improved, though still far from covering the actual expense.
As I gathered my notes and Jerome checked the time — he had papers to grade before dinner, he said — he made one last observation that I’ve thought about since. He said that in the classroom, when a student is struggling with a concept, he never assumes the student is at fault. He looks first at whether the explanation made sense.
“That’s how I think about all this,” he said, folding his papers into his bag. “The explanation given to people like me — that if you work hard and earn enough, the math works out — that explanation has a flaw in it somewhere. I just haven’t figured out where yet.”
I left El Paso not with an answer to that, but with a clearer picture of what the question costs a person to carry every day.
Vivienne Marlowe Reyes is Senior Tax & Stimulus Writer at American Relief. This article reflects one individual’s reported experience and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice. Tax rules and program eligibility are subject to change.
Related: He’s an Accountant Who Knows All the Rules — at 48, He Still Can’t Afford His Own Prescriptions
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