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Think you've got it tough?
When I was a child, my family faced its greatest financial crisis when my sister and I were in elementary school and our father was laid off from his job at a power plant.My mother must have been terrified. She'd known want and poverty as a child growing up in the Depression; her perch in the middle class must have seemed precarious indeed.
But she never let it show. We knew Dad had lost his job, of course, but Mom confidently predicted he'd find another one soon. When he did, it meant a move across the state, away from all our friends and the only home we kids had ever known, but she made it seem like a grand adventure.
In other words, she made sure the worry and uncertainty that dogged her childhood didn't touch ours. It was just one of her many gifts to us.
She's gone now, but I can just imagine what she'd think of all the people flapping around, clucking about imagined financial catastrophes when they still have jobs, homes, two cars in the garage and money in the (FDIC-insured) bank.
I can almost hear her say it: "Oh, grow up."
Liz Pulliam Weston's latest book, "Easy Money: How to Simplify Your Finances and Get What You Want Out of Life," is now available. Columns by Weston, the Web's most-read personal-finance writer and winner of the 2007 Clarion Award for online journalism, appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions on the Your Money message board.
Published Oct. 27, 2008
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