The break room at a community hospital in Denver smells like burned coffee and hand sanitizer at 6 a.m. That’s where Samantha Reeves told me she does most of her financial planning — scribbling numbers on the back of a supply requisition form between the end of a night shift and the drive to pick up her daughter from her neighbor’s house. “I don’t have a kitchen table moment,” she said. “I have a parking lot moment.”
Samantha is 31 years old, a registered nurse, and the only financial safety net her five-year-old daughter has ever known. Her ex-partner disappeared from their lives two years ago — no child support, no contact, no forwarding address. What he left behind was a gap that no salary, however solid, fully fills.
A Salary That Looks Fine on Paper
When I first reached out to Samantha, she was skeptical about being interviewed. “I feel like I’m not supposed to complain,” she told me. “I have a job. I have a license. I know people have it worse.” That kind of self-editing is something I hear often from working professionals who fall into what I’ve started thinking of as the invisible squeeze — earning enough to disqualify themselves from some programs, not enough to actually feel secure.
Samantha earns approximately $72,000 a year before taxes, which in most American cities would represent genuine stability. In Denver, it means she qualifies for very little direct assistance while facing a cost structure that would strain a household with two incomes.
Daycare alone runs $1,400 a month — nearly identical to her rent. Her student loan payments on $38,000 in nursing school debt add another $310 a month under her current income-driven repayment plan. After taxes, housing, childcare, loans, groceries, and transportation, Samantha told me she typically has between $200 and $400 left over at the end of a month. “And that’s if nothing breaks,” she said.
Two Years of Leaving Money on the Table
What Samantha didn’t know — and what took me some time to walk her through during our conversation — was that she had likely been under-claiming federal tax benefits for at least two filing years.
The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) is designed specifically for situations like hers. According to the IRS, taxpayers who pay for the care of a qualifying child under age 13 so they can work may claim a credit based on a percentage of up to $3,000 in expenses for one child. For tax year 2025, the credit percentage ranges from 20% to 35% depending on adjusted gross income — meaning Samantha, at her income level, would likely qualify for the 20% rate, translating to up to $600 in direct credit against her tax bill.
Samantha had heard of the credit but assumed, as many people in her situation do, that she earned too much to benefit. “I figured it was for people who make less than me,” she told me. “I just never looked into it.” The credit doesn’t phase out entirely at her income level — it simply reduces from the maximum percentage. She had been filing without it for two years.
There’s also the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which phases out at higher income levels and which Samantha correctly identified as likely out of her range as a single filer with one child. For tax year 2025, the EITC income limit for a single filer with one qualifying child is approximately $46,560 — well below her salary. That one, she had right.
The Overtime Trap and the Cost of Exhaustion
To close the gap, Samantha picks up overtime shifts when she can — sometimes adding eight to twelve extra hours a week on top of her regular schedule. She described this to me not as ambition but as arithmetic. “It’s not like I want to work more. It’s that I need the money and I don’t have another option.”
The irony she named herself: overtime income pushes her further from any income-based assistance while costing her in ways that don’t show up on a tax return. She’s more tired, which means she’s less present with her daughter. She worries about making a clinical error when she’s running on four hours of sleep. “Nursing is not a job where you can just phone it in,” she said. “People’s lives are actually in my hands.”
This pattern — making solid plans, losing the energy to execute them — runs through almost everything Samantha described to me. She knows about income-driven repayment adjustments for her student loans. She knows there are state-level childcare subsidy programs in Colorado. She has a list on her phone of things to look into. The list is eight months old.
What She Actually Found When She Finally Looked
In January 2026, Samantha finally sat down with a volunteer tax preparer through a free VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) site near her hospital. According to the IRS, VITA offers free federal tax return preparation to people who generally make $67,000 or less — Samantha was just above that threshold, but the site accepted her anyway given her single-parent status and the preparer’s discretion.
The result for tax year 2025: Samantha received a federal refund of approximately $1,140, which included the CDCTC she had never previously claimed. It was not a windfall. But it was real money — money she told me she used to pay down three months of accumulated interest on her student loans.
“It felt like finding a twenty in a coat pocket,” she told me. “Except the coat was my own life and I’d been wearing it the whole time.”
The Regret That Comes With Relief
I asked Samantha how she felt knowing she had likely left similar credits on the table for the two prior tax years. She was quiet for a moment. “Honestly? Frustrated. At myself, mostly. I knew I should look into it. I just kept not doing it.”
She estimated — roughly, without having filed amended returns — that she may have missed between $1,000 and $1,200 in credits over the previous two filing years. The IRS generally allows taxpayers to file amended returns using Form 1040-X within three years of the original filing deadline, meaning her 2023 and 2024 returns could potentially still be amended. The VITA preparer mentioned this to her. She has not yet acted on it.
There’s something in that sentence — one Saturday that doesn’t disappear — that stayed with me after I left Denver. Samantha’s situation isn’t unusual. It’s the specific exhaustion of being the only adult in a household, the person who has to be competent at everything simultaneously: clinical care, parenting, financial planning, meal prep, emotional regulation. The tax code has tools that could help her. Accessing them requires time and energy she is perpetually short on.
She is not behind because she is careless. She is behind because the system assumes a level of administrative bandwidth that single working parents rarely have.
When I last spoke with Samantha in late March 2026, she was coming off a double shift. Her daughter had a cold. She had $287 left in her checking account until her next paycheck. She was, by any reasonable measure, exhausted. But she also told me something I didn’t expect: “I feel less invisible than I did six months ago. Like, the money exists somewhere in the system for people like me. I just have to go get it.”
That’s not a happy ending. It’s not a resolved story. It’s a woman in the middle of her life, holding a list on her phone, waiting for a Saturday that might actually hold still long enough for her to use it.
Vivienne Marlowe Reyes is a Senior Tax & Stimulus Writer at American Relief. This article is reported narrative journalism and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice. Readers should consult a qualified tax professional regarding their individual circumstances.
Related: The IRS Held Her $4,200 Refund for 11 Weeks While Her Daycare Bill Kept Coming Due
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