• I have five kids ranging in age from teens to elementary schoolers.
• My husband is a public-school teacher, and I'm a freelancer.
• I didn't know my kids were going to get more expensive as they got older.

The unfortunate truth about my life as a mom of five kids, ranging in age from teens to elementary schoolers, is that I've been living outside my means for a very long time.

My husband is a public-school teacher in a rural area, and I'm a freelancer, so our income is modest. But with five children — and two teenagers at that — I just don't know how to make it all work.

I knew having kids would be expensive, but I didn't expect or plan for how much more expensive kids would get as they got older.

Our cost of living has gone up

Between groceries, electricity and heating bills, car insurance, health insurance, homeowners and property insurance, car bills, life insurance, dental insurance, and unexpected expenses, we've seen our cost of living explode over the past three years. Our bills have quite literally tripled in some instances, but our income hasn't risen.

To give you a little peak at my finances, this month alone, the following bills have all come due:

• Travel sports: $1,000
• Car insurance six-month policy for two adults and a teen driver: $2,800
• Homeowners' insurance: $4,000
• Winter property taxes: $2,200
• Braces: $4,000
• New tires for winter: $2,000

I guess I should have expected how widely expensive life would be as a parent, but I can honestly say I didn't expect how dramatically more expensive my kids would be as they got older.

Teenagers are so expensive

Teenagers come with an entirely new onslaught of expenses that I didn't prepare myself for — everything costs more with teens. Aside from the "big" expenses such as more expensive car insurance, technology for college, and gas, even the little things cost more. For instance, whereas I could once run to the store and buy my kids $5 shirts for the school year, outfitting them now costs much more than that. Everything including socks, shoes, toiletries, sports, and school costs keeps rising, with no end in sight.

Outside the arguable extravagance of a travel sport, my husband and I do everything possible to make our lives work. I shop at Aldi for our groceries, our kids wear hand-me-downs and Walmart clothes, I thrift whenever possible, we rarely go out to eat, my kids have jobs, and my husband works two other jobs outside his full-time job as a schoolteacher. My work pays for our limited streaming services and phones, and our entertainment is primarily spent at home (or watching siblings' games, of course.)

I wonder whether I shouldn't have stayed home when they were little

The frustration of feeling like our expenses are out of control has led me to reflect on the choices I've made as a mom. I've always prided myself on being primarily at home with my kids. After I became a mom unexpectedly during my senior year of college, I did my best to do what I thought "good" moms should do and worked extremely hard to always be home as much as possible with my kids — I worked the night shift and built a career freelancing so that I could be the consistent at-home parental presence. And I've been proud of that.

But now that I have two teenagers and am about to usher in a third, I'm wondering whether I did the right thing after all. Should I have spent more time working back then and saving money for this time in my life when my kids still need me in very tangible and albeit more expensive ways? Did I really consider the trade-off of my earning potential and how much we could need that money in these teen stages?

My experience so far is that the teen years are just as time intensive as the early baby and toddler years. They don't have the same level of physical exhaustion and sleep deprivation, of course, but they're incredibly mentally and emotionally taxing. Add in the stress of trying to pay for everything and work more because you think the kids are "more independent," and it can be a recipe for disaster. I feel stretched so thin right now trying to afford our lives when the truth is that my teens need me to be emotionally and physically present more than ever.

• My husband has been teaching for 20 years.
• His salary is $19,000 above the poverty level for our family of seven.
• While money is tight, it's worth him keeping his job for our health insurance.

For most of his career as a public school teacher, my husband's paycheck has hovered just above the poverty level for our family. This past summer, my children even qualified for the free lunch program through the schools.

Today, with my husband's 20 years of teaching experience and a Masters degree, his pay is about $19,000 above the poverty level for a family of our size in our state. He has reached the top of the teaching pay scale at our school, which means his income will not increase after this year, but with five children, two of them teens and two on the brink, we are entering one of the most expensive phases of our lives.

Although we have talked about my husband leaving teaching many, many times, the discussion always comes back to one sticking point: health insurance.

Our health insurance is great

We are extremely fortunate the teachers' union that my husband's school works with has always advocated for top-tier healthcare. Part of that is many teachers and teacher's families who have special health needs, but regardless of the catalyst, our family has always enjoyed what I feel is excellent health insurance.

Our annual family deductible is $2,000, and we have a PPO, which means I've never had to deal with referrals or even prior authorization. I've never had to fight an insurance company, and we've never had a denial.

There was a time in my life when we were first married and still in college when I used Medicaid for my pregnancy. I felt so ashamed every time I went to the doctor, although I was incredibly grateful that I never paid a dime during my pregnancy, and it allowed me to graduate from college as a nurse exactly one week before delivering my baby.

Despite my shame in using Medicaid, the experience also opened our eyes to how important health insurance is because I had postpartum complications that led me to have two hospitalizations after giving birth.

The statements were mailed to our house after I had recovered, and when I saw how high the statements were for those bills and then realized they had been fully covered, I wept in relief. At that time in our lives, as brand-new parents and new college graduates, a $20,000 hospital bill would have ruined our lives. Instead, we were able to start our adult lives fresh and immediately started working, paying back into the system that saved us.

We don't have crippling medical bills

With those memories in hand and five children we are responsible for, we have always felt that any potential lower income as a public school teacher has been worth it for access to high-quality health insurance. We've been fortunate not to have any true medical emergencies, but even with seemingly "normal" medical events, like a premature baby and a weeklong NICU stay, we have still not experienced any of the crippling medical bills that haunt many American families.

I do wish that teachers were paid just a little higher, especially considering how highly valued they were during the pandemic, but for us, health insurance alone has made it worth it.

I don't know what will happen in the future, especially with education and healthcare, but I do hope that we can continue to prioritize the health insurance that has made our lives possible to this point because it provides us with a lot of peace of mind. But even more so, it might be nice to get to a point in society when employer-tied health insurance doesn't rule our decision-making.