I have an economics degree. I'm not a financial advisor, not a CPA, not a benefits attorney. What I have is a way of looking at numbers — at incentives, tradeoffs, and the gap between what a system is supposed to do and what it actually does. I found that lens useful in a place most people don't expect to apply it: motherhood.
And like everyone else in 2020, I baked the sourdough. I also started learning how to trade — because if you weren't baking bread and opening a brokerage account during the pandemic, were you really even experiencing it? But underneath the starter jars and the new Robinhood app was something less funny: my kids and I ended up on Medi-Cal. Not as an abstraction I'd studied — it was my actual life, my actual paperwork, my actual eligibility renewal.
"Most people think about a raise as just a number going up. I learned to think about it as a number that had to clear a threshold — or it could cost me more than it gave me."
The lens, applied to a real situation
I had been working in hospitality. I loved that job — it was the kind of work that doesn't feel like work when it's going well. Then the pandemic hit, the industry imploded, and I was laid off. It didn't fully recover, and that path closed. My kids and I ended up on Medi-Cal during that period. Not as an abstraction I'd studied — it was my actual paperwork, my actual eligibility renewal, my actual kids' health coverage sitting on a threshold I had to understand.
What changed things for me wasn't a single dramatic moment — no turned-down raise, no big confrontation with a number. It was something quieter: learning that contributing to a Traditional IRA lowers the income number that Medi-Cal actually checks. Not my gross income. Not my paycheck. My MAGI.
I know I wasn't alone in feeling the weight of that cliff, even though my own story didn't involve turning anything down. I've heard from other parents who have — people who turned down a raise, or asked their manager for fewer hours, specifically to stay under a benefits threshold. That's not a rare, isolated choice. It's a rational response to a system that punishes earning more, and it's exactly the kind of decision this site exists to help people avoid having to make.
Three things happening at once, instead of a tradeoff
Contributing to a Traditional IRA during that period did three things at once for my family: it kept my kids insured on Medi-Cal by lowering my MAGI, it built real retirement wealth that compounded in the market, and it meant I didn't have to avoid income just to stay under a threshold. It wasn't a one-time fix. It was a recurring practice — something I revisited every time my income shifted.
Why the economics lens mattered
An economics degree teaches you to ask certain questions automatically: what's the incentive structure here? Who responds rationally to it, and how? Where's the gap between intended outcome and actual outcome? Applied to the benefits cliff, those questions had clear answers — and most people navigating Medi-Cal have never had a reason to ask them, because nobody hands you an economics textbook with your eligibility letter.
What the economics lens revealed
This wasn't a story about one moment
I want to be honest about something: this site didn't come from turning down a single raise at a single dramatic crossroads. It came out of doing this math during a period when our household income had fallen sharply, as a mother trying to understand the system she was suddenly inside, because the alternative was guessing — and guessing with my kids' health coverage wasn't something I was willing to do.
That repeated practice — checking my MAGI, adjusting my IRA contribution, staying under the threshold while still building savings — is the actual thing I want to hand to other families. Not a single insight from a single crisis, but a habit: look at your income the way an economist would, and use the tools the tax code already gives you.
This was ongoing, not a story with a single ending
I kept checking my numbers and adjusting my IRA contribution as my situation shifted during that period. There wasn't a single moment where the problem got solved and stayed solved — the practice itself was the strategy. That's the thing I want to hand to other families: not a one-time fix, but a habit of looking at the numbers the way an economist would.
Build your own version of this practice
Use the calculator to see where your MAGI sits relative to your threshold — and revisit it whenever your income changes.
Check my numbers →