Aniah Fennie has a college degree and a good job as a social worker. Alexandria Smith works about 60 hours a week as a critical research coordinator. Margret Shawgo has a full time job at Radiology Regional. These Southwest Florida moms all work hard, yet say they need a second job to pay the rent and utilities and buy food and clothing. Then there are the stay-at-home moms who can’t afford to work outside the home because of high daycare costs, yet need a way to earn some extra income. All of them are looking for ways to survive soaring prices.
Fennie was extremely frustrated struggling to keep up with the rising costs.
“I’m a social worker and a single mother of two. It’s to the point where I have to choose between paying my rent or buying food,” she stated. “Being in the middle class is super hard because I don’t qualify for any type of government assistance such as food stamps or Medicaid. It’s so discouraging because the whole purpose of me going to college was so I wouldn’t have to struggle, and I feel like I failed.”
Fennie, who is the mother of a 7 year old and 1 year old, recently had to leave town to make ends meet.
“I was living in Fort Myers and it was getting to the point where I was trying to do everything. I was doing Door Dash, Uber, babysitting on the side, and working as a case manager as my full time job,” she described. “It was not enough to keep my head above water, so I decided to relocate to Atlanta. It is still expensive, but not as expensive as Florida. I am doing good, but I miss Florida.”
She said it is so sad that a person with a college degree and a good job struggles to pay the bills.
“It is not cheap here either," she said. “My grocery bill is still expensive. A good third of my check goes to my rent. It was worse in Southwest Florida; half my check went to rent and then daycare and I didn’t have any money for food. Hopefully things can change.”
Smith is a third generation Floridian, born and raised in Naples. She thought that her good job, with overtime working 60 hours a week, as a critical research coordinator would be enough, and it was until prices skyrocketed.
“The economy here is hard,” she said. “Our rent jumped, our auto insurance jumped another $300 a month, and we have to pay $260 a week in daycare. Groceries alone kill us. I've tried to find a second job myself and it's hard because I live in Fort Myers and work in Naples, and during season it can take me almost two hours to get home. Most people that live in Fort Myers have to work in Naples. You can’t afford to live in Naples with the rent, but can’t afford to work in Fort Myers. My same position in Fort Myers, I would get $7 an hour less.”
To earn some extra cash Smith posts in moms’ Facebook groups to see if anyone needs help with groceries or handywork.
“I don’t get a lot of feedback because it is so saturated,” she explained. “A lot of people are already doing those things. I have helped somebody move, but that was it. Sometimes my boss will ask me if I want extra money to do odds and ends at the office after work.”
Smith, who has a 14-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, has done Uber Eats but stopped because many customers weren’t tipping her.
“I work in a profession where I shouldn’t be struggling,” she said. “We get paid very well here, but nobody can keep up with inflation.”
Shawgo works full time while raising her daughters ages, 14 and 9.
“I work at Five Guys every other week when my girls are at their dad’s house,” she said. “I go home after work, let the dog out, and go straight to the other job.”
The Lehigh Acres resident feels lucky to find an employer that lets her work every other week. “It is very hard for single parents who have a custody agreement to find a second job.” Shawgo said the situation is very frustrating.
“It has almost become unaffordable to live here, not just for single parents, but for people with double incomes as well. At some point it will be unaffordable to live here.”
Amanda Flaitz Von Ohlsen.
Amanda Flaitz Von Ohlsen works in her Cape Coral home with her 4-year-old daughter Everly.
Stay and Work at Home
Stay-at-home moms are also being forced to find work to help pay the bills, and it is not easy juggling work and little ones.
Amanda Flaitz Von Ohlsen of Cape Coral has a 16-year-old son, a 6-year-old son with special needs, and a 4-year old daughter. She said it is impossible to get a job outside the home because her middle child needs to be driven to therapy five days a week and her youngest would need expensive daycare.
“It would cost more money to go back to work,” she said.
So Flaitz Von Ohlsen started her own digital marketing business that she runs from home. She teaches people how to enhance their social media pages, sell products, and create their own digital marketing business. She recently wrote an e-book about online moneymaking.
“I am starting to make some money,” she said “It took a while to learn the skills, partially since my children are distracting.”
This was not the first venture Flaitz Von Ohlsen tried. For a while she sold hair bows.
.“It was not worth making all these bows and just selling five or 10, so I started researching ways to make money from home. If I sold 10 hair bows, I had to make 10, but with digital marketing if I sell 10 e-books I only have to make it once, so it was working smarter instead of harder.”
It is not always easy. She tries to work while her boys are in school, but she still has to care for her daughter.
“I work on my phone – like all the time,” she described. “I fit it into the little pockets of time throughout my day. We will go to the park and she will play and I will work. We go to Chick-fil-A and while she plays I might get 45 minutes there.”
It’s not easy balancing working from home with children. Ashley Mandeville, Ph.D., an assistant professor of management at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, has some tips.
“This is a tough one,” she began. “The boundary theory is the idea that we construct boundaries around our work self and family self. Sometimes you can’t separate those two worlds and that can cause stress and frustration.”
She suggests creating a home office or designated work space.
“It can be, ‘When I am at this dining table from 1-5, this is my work space’,” she explained. “The most helpful thing is to create those boundaries and understand that sometimes those boundaries are going to get crossed.”
Starting a Business
Ashley Deal of Cape Coral had worked as an eighth grade science teacher in Lee County, cleaned AirBnbs, and rented out her garage as storage space. She has even sold plasma to earn extra cash.
“I was the queen of side hustles for a while,” she said. “You go in with those degrees and you think you are going to make a lot of money, but the only way to survive is to do overtime or side jobs,”
Then she discovered another way to earn money and spend more time with her three children. Deal started her own business called Cape Credit Repair LLC.
“I do credit repair and business funding,” Deal explained. “I have helped over 200 moms in the area qualify for zero down houses and mortgages. It is a very lucrative job.”
Deal said this was not the way she thought her life would go.
“I had my masters in psychology and I couldn’t afford to live here,” she said. “I was very good at credit repair and I tripled my salary from teaching. Everybody wants to be able to afford a house. Teaching was rewarding, but this is definitely rewarding too.”
Elise Friedson of Naples also found success by starting her own business. The stay-at-home mom knew she needed some work, but also had a young child to care for. She started renting baby equipment to visitors to SWFL. She uses BabyQuip as a platform to secure the insurance and marketing, which takes a portion of her profits, but Friedson says the business is hers so she can work as much or as little as she wants. She began by renting items her 3-year-old daughter had outgrown and then started buying additional items, and now rents everything from cribs and highchairs to beach wagons and beach chairs.
“Everything is very expensive,” she said. “We wanted to have that extra money on the side.”
Friedson feels it is beneficial for her daughter to see her work, and her child can even help. “I wanted her to see that work ethic. She helps me at home with cleaning and carrying things. She is very excited to help.”
Be Selective
Gina A. Tran, associate professor of marketing at FGCU, stresses that parents need to be cautious and pick the right jobs.
“There are side hustle gigs that sound like a wonderful opportunity for families that need that additional income.” But she warns that some of them are too good to be true and can end up costing more money than earned.
“If this wonderful opportunity asks you to pay money in advance, be very careful,” she warned, and added that job seekers should be wary of unsolicited offers.
Ask questions about salary and upfront costs and requirements, she advised, and check out the company on the Better Business Bureau website.
“If it is too good to be true, it probably is,” she said.
“People think it is legitimate because it is through a [Facebook] group. They are in need of extra income and they are vulnerable … so they unfortunately fall for it,” Tran said.
“There are a lot of people that are struggling to make ends meet with the rising costs. It is hard. Some are doing these side hustles to save up and some are doing it more as a survival thing. We are hearing more and more of these kinds of stories.”