Every time Eric Pinsonneault visits the grocery store, it’s a nail-biter for the single father of three kids, all under the age of 10.

He pushes his cart down the aisle, silently hoping to find a sale, or at the very least price tags that haven’t risen too much since his last visit.

Most of the time that doesn’t happen, and so he gets inventive — price matching, only serving the family meat three times a week, and cooking dishes that rely on cheaper staples such as rice and pasta.

“My income is so low, it makes everything that much harder,” says Pinsonneault, who lives on $38,000 a year, just above minimum wage.

That places him among the 1.5 million Torontonians making less than $21 an hour and in a smaller group earning under $18.52 — the figure recently reported as the necessary hourly wage to meet the needs of two parents working full-time while raising two children.

These low earners are part of a growing class plagued by skyrocketing housing prices, astronomical child-care rates and a broadening sense of poverty that puts a strain on shelters, food banks and welfare organizations.

Pinsonneault, a 30-year-old who calls himself “poor,” never expected to join that category when he was fresh out of university, comfortably living in a three-bedroom Chatham house that cost him $700 a month.

That was before he had three kids, went through a divorce, lost a job in a brutal downsizing and moved to Toronto.

Now, the administrative co-ordinator for a local start-up finds himself watching bills grow, wondering how he will cobble together enough cash to pay them off. Recently, he had to borrow from family to cover his credit card expenses, and just before that, he accepted his children’s school’s offer to pay their agenda fees.

“There is always something else,” he says. “I just got hit for a field trip for $20.”

Meanwhile, he says, his kids are getting older, needing more food and feeling pressure from peers to wear name-brand clothing and own all the latest Apple gadgets. The family can’t afford a landline or cable TV, so fancy clothing or an iPad are out of the question, says Pinsonneault. The same goes for trips to the movies or nights out.

To make up for it, Pinsonneault treats the family to breakfast at Sunset Grill once a month. Other times, he will shell out $15 on three $5 pizzas, giving the family enough food for lunch and two fun dinners.

“(My kids) understand that it’s only my money and that we are poor,” he says. “I try to give them as much as I can, but it’s hard.”

The odd time he gets a break, as when the TTC recently announced that kids under the age of 12 can ride free. That’s saving him $80 a month.

But even that hasn’t fully extinguished the burden he feels when he sees his children and has to slap a smile on his face.

After tucking them into bed one evening, he told the Star, “I’m struggling, but emotionally, as a parent, I am bogged down knowing that they don’t get everything. That’s the hardest part.”

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One day, he envisions things could be more manageable — he’ll move up in the fast-growing company he works for and, perhaps, the government will listen to collective pleas for lower child care and housing costs and a higher minimum wage.

But even then, he says, “I never put my hopes up high. It’s one day at a time.”