Both [of my granddaughters] Octavia and Lavinia have May birthdays. I've just been birthday shopping with them. But the shopping has a budget. I say, "Okay, if you pick this out, then you'll have how much left?" I wait for them to do the calculation, and they'll say, "$18." And we stand there and talk about, hmm, is that sweater really worth that much? And the girls work it through.Doing that takes away some of the magic of money.

If there had been a Financial Product Safety Commission in place 10 years ago, the current financial crisis would have been averted.

Once kids get older, the list is longer. So here goes: Stay out of debt. Sometimes debt is necessary, to buy a home or to get an education, but not to buy a sweater or to eat out.

There's a lot of research on the shift in who deals with money when families get in trouble. In good times, husbands handle the family's finances about 80 percent of the time. But when times turn sour and families start dealing with creditors and managing unpayable bills, women take more active roles.

The poor pay more, and that's one of the reasons people get trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.

My parents and I were all afraid of being poor - really poor.

I have a daughter and I have granddaughters and I will never vote to let a group of backward-looking ideologues cut women's access to birth control. We have lived in that world, and we are not going back, not ever