Christina Darling finally replaced her 2006 Chevrolet Equinox after it broke down several times while picking her children up from daycare. But the 31-year-old mother of two was struggling to keep up with the car payments. Brianne Walker desperately wanted to take her three children and two siblings camping for the first time but wasn’t sure how she could pay for it. After all, she was behind on her rent, and daycare and grocery costs were adding up.

Then, the two women from New Hampshire got a surprise in their bank accounts this month. They qualified for the expanded child tax credit, part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. Families on average are getting $423 this month; the Treasury Department estimates that 35.2 million families received payments in July.

“The additional money does help alleviate the pressure,” said Walker, 29, who took custody of her two siblings last year after her mother overdosed. The $800 credit will help make up for losses she incurred after quitting a kitchen design job to care for the five youngsters, ages 3 to 19.

“When people have money over a consistent period of time, it’s easier to make sure it’s going to the expenses you really need,” he said. “Sometimes, if you get it all at once, it’s hard to budget.”

Robin McKinney, co-founder and CEO of the CASH Campaign of Maryland, a Baltimore nonprofit organization that helps low-income residents file taxes, said the credit is providing people money in their pockets now, when they need it most.

“We know right now that peoples’ hours are down or they’re still struggling to get back to the same level of income that they had before, and this will create some stability for those families to know that over the next six months that they’re going to be getting this payment,” McKinney said.

McKinney, who is married with a 5-year-old son and qualifies for the tax credit, is getting $167 a month. She said it’s all going to help pay for child care, which costs $288 a week.

“Right now, it’s out-of-school time because it’s the summer, so people have to pay for camps and babysitting support so that the parents can go to work,” said McKinney, of Columbia, Maryland. “I know a lot of people who are like: ‘This money is coming at just the right time, because this summer is more expensive for me for child care.’”

Many families in higher-income brackets who receive less money are socking it away for things like a family trip, school supplies or Christmas gifts.

Carleigh Steele, who received several hundred dollars, said the money is giving her peace of mind a month after she moved into a house in Baltimore with the help of Habitat for Humanity.

“It’s sitting in my bank account for all the home-buying things that I need, and for the rainy day fund for my house — just to make sure that I can keep myself economically stable,” said Steele, who has a 6-year-old daughter. Brianne Epps, a mother of four from Jackson, Mississippi, is using the money to pay bills but also to finance her dream of opening a soul food catering business. “It will help me, for one, to promote my catering business — to get that off the ground,” she said. Molly Vigeant, of East Hartford, Connecticut, a 25-year-old single mother who works as a special needs paraprofessional in a high school, hopes to spend the money to repair or replace her car. But she’s had trouble accessing a portal aimed at helping applicants and hasn’t yet received anything.

“It doesn’t hurt yet,” she said of the delayed payment. “But, it’s a 20-year-old car with over 200,000 miles on it and I make 20 grand a year. A new one is not going to fall from the sky, when your debt-to-income ratio is garbage and you know you can’t finance a car.”

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