It is critical that the American people, and not just their financial institutions, be represented at the negotiating table.

I get heartfelt thanks from all kinds of people. Today I heard from a waitress in Georgia who has lost her job and is trying to figure out how her local bank can change the terms on her credit card, and I heard from a physicist at a major research university who wants to explain a better theory of financial stress tests.

My daddy's response [to fear of being poor] was to never talk about money or what might happen if it ran out.

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.

I don't like credit cards. They make overspending very easy. They can make life a lot more complex and stressful.

I'm still very connected to my family, to the world I grew up in. I understand what it means to be afraid that you can't pay a doctor's bill. Or to have to make the choice between buying a band uniform for a seventh-grader and making the insurance payment on time. That will never leave me. It was how I lived until I was well into my adult years.

My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack.