Whenever someone asks me my greatest fear, the very first thing that comes to mind is poverty.  I grew up in a small town in Michigan.  We were those country folks for whom my dad's success deer hunting in November really did make a difference in how well we would eat all winter.  My mom, in addition to holding down two minimum-wage jobs, grew a garden and canned everything from it, which sounds nice and idyllic now, but at the time was no joke.  This was survival, and tomato worms and potato bugs really were our competitors.  We were government cheese and powdered milk poor.  We were cars repossesed and a leaky roof we couldn't afford to fix poor.

My dad was an abuser.  He was a belittler, and a hitter, and a molester.  He was never one to hold a job, or see anything as his responsibility aside from following his wife and children around so he could catch you doing something "bad" for which he could punish you.  I went to college 6 hours away from home.  One day, a friend came to my house and said, "Some strange man is sitting in a truck across the street with a pair of binoculars looking at your house."  Of course it was my dad.  Who else would it be?  The man had driven 6 hours one way to spy on me.  But then, he had skulked around outside the bedroom windows of every one of my childhood friends when I was growing up, both to look for things to punish me for, and I'm sure, to see if he could get a glimpse of naked teenage girls.  He was lucky he didn't end up getting shot by some other father--though my mom got more than one exasperated phone call about this.  What could she do, though?

Though she was the one who made all the money in the house, she always turned it over to him.  He would sometimes pay bills, and sometimes not, as he saw fit, and then she would be down at the phone company convincing her friend from kindergarten to waive the reconnection fee and turn our line back on, with a promise we would pay it when her next paycheck came in.  She would squirm in shame at having to call in those favors, knowing full well it would be the source of the gossip at the bank and the grocery store the next day, because he had taken her money and bought old car parts with it, and it had been precious little money to begin with.  What she never did, at least not until I was gone from home, was put enough aside to walk out.  However, she has always told me that if she couldn't be a role model, then at least she could be a warning beacon, and she instilled in me the idea that every woman should have a little mad money to get them out of a bad situation. 

My husband is not an abuser, or a belittler, or a molester.  I married better than she did, and  I don't forsee needing to beat a hasty retreat.  However, I control the finances.  I know that our bills are paid, and I know that we will have enough coming in that we are not ever really in danger of going hungry, because I work hard at my two jobs.  We won't have a car repossessed.  I won't ever be so poor that I can't get gone if I need to.  I have my stash of mad money.